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Stories From ’Round the World 


By 

CORA BANKS PIERCE 

and 

HAZEL NORTHROP 


Stories from Foreign Lands . . . ^ 1.25 

A new sheaf of stories by the authors, of “ Stories 
from Far Away.” The scenes of the fascinating tales 
are set in far-off corners of the earth. Children of 
Turkey, Persia, Armenia, Africa and “the isles 
of the sea ” are portrayed with skilful hand, and 
given a wealth of interesting and yet nowise 
improbable adventure. Well calculated to stimu¬ 
late interest in missionary endeavor, especially in 
junior circles. 


Stories from Far Away 

Illustrated.1^1.25 

“ These stories are full of information, and are 
told in a most fascinating way. The details reveal 
the manners, habits, surroundings, home life and 
religious needs, etc. The book has extraordinary 
value for parents, teachers and religious leaders 
generally who have opportunity to acquaint young 
people with the ‘ other half of the world.’ ” 

— Lookout. 








•A STRANGE BROTHER OF OURS* 


FROM AFRICA 



Stories From ’Round 
the World 


By 

HAZEL NORTHROP 



) > 
) > > 


New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 


yz.1 


Copyright, 1923, by Dt. 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 





New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 

OCT 13 1^23 


©C1A759378 

•MV 


To 

My Mother 

CORA BANKS PIERCE 

**Loved long since and lost awhile^* 







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. . 1 




FOREWOKD 


P erhaps some people will like to know 
that the stories in this hook are all au¬ 
thentically heathenish. That is, they are 
each one founded on some true incident of heathen¬ 
dom, and are not, as might be supposed, but weird 
imaginings of a young author’s brain. Also, none 
of these incidents have been heightened in order 
to make a good story, hut several of them have been 
considerably toned down, that they might not be 
too horrible. The hard-boiled cynic is supposed to 
raise a questioning eyebrow when America is 
spoken of as a Christian nation. Let him but 
reflect that in Christian lands horrors are labelled 
Horrors.” In lands where Christ has not been 
born -horrors are labelled Customs.” 

Also, please believe that the author has had a 
perfectly lovely time writing of these horrors,” 
these flendish customs, these whatever-they-may-be 
kind of stories. The heathen, whatever else you 
can say of them, are so delightfully illogical, so 
exactly like the rest of us, given their chance, their 
environment. 

May you like ’em, too, these People Who Know 
Ho Better, these strange brothers of ours. 

H. H. 

iCedae Beach, Milfoed, Conk. 


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I 



Contents 

Africa 


I. 

The Horse Which Bought Lella a 

Dress. 

9 

II. 

The Man With the Solid Gold Ribs 

18 

III. 

The Drum and the Poison Bean . 

26 

IV. 

The Soul-Trinket of Maryia 

37 


India 


V. 

The Littlest Tag-End Widow 

47 


The Near East 


VI. 

Ayesha Solves Her A, B, C . 

53 

VII. 

Uncle Ourig Plays Ghost 

60 

VIII. 

The Utterlies. 

68 


Spain 


IX. 

Zara and the Terrible Mantilla 

77 

X. 

The Boy Whose Christmas Name was 
Billy-Tears. 

87 


China 


XI. 

Little-Sister-Two is Stolen 

98 


8 


CONTENTS 


XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 


Japan 

The Gift of the Bronze Bull . .108 

Philippine Islands 

When the Goblins Got Estan . .117 

South America 

Benny Sells Linoleum . . . .126 

Mexico 

Maria and the Magic Book . . , 135 

The Sunny South 

The White Trash Princess and the 

Walking Doll .... 143 


AFKICA 


I 


The Horse Which Bought Leila a Dress 


A lthough Lella Morjem lived as far 
away as any little girl you ever heard 
of, when she was nine years old she 
wanted a new dress. Of course she had lots of 
dresses, hut being nine is quite different from 

being eight, so you see- 

Anyway, Leila Moryem’s father was the pasha 
of a great old Morocco city, and as the pasha is 
a kind of governor, everybody had to do exactly 
as he said, that is, everybody but Leila herself. 
You needn’t tell this, but the pasha had to do ex¬ 
actly as Leila said, but I guess he didn’t know 
that. It happened, though, that Leila’s mother 
was the pasha’s favourite wife. He had lots of 
wives, I don’t know exactly how many, and I’m 
not sure that the pasha did either. But Leila’s 
mother w^as the youngest and the prettiest, and 

Lella was her mother’s only little girl—so- 

Anyway, when Leila’s mother told Leila’s daddy 
that it really was time for Lella to have that dress, 
the pasha looked very queer. 

Just see this lovely stuff,” said Leila’s mother, 

9 




10 STORIES FROM GROUND THE WORLH 


and showed him a tid-hit of white tulle. It was 
embroidered all over in garlands, oh, the loveliest 
in the world, and anybody but a stuffy old pasha 
would have loved it. 

Instead of loving it, the pasha drew his thun¬ 
derous eyebrows together in a perfeetly awful 
Mohammedan way he had and rumbled, “ Why do 
you show this nonsense to me ? Do you suppose I 
am a Kissaria ? 

A Kissaria, of course, is a market where one 
buys cloth, and really when he drew himself up, 
and puffed himself out, with his baggy sleeves 
and bulgy garments wound round him, he really 
looked as if he could do quite a retail trade in his 
own clothes. I am sure if anybody had ever dared 
unwind him, they could have cut about seventeen 
pairs of sleeves out of his bloomers alone. 

Leila’s mother wrinkled her pretty face to a 
pout. Oh, my husband,” she said, “ everybody 
will laugh at me if Leila has no new tfina for her 
ninth year. They will say, ^ The wife of the pasha 
know^s no more about dressing her child than a 
Bedouin woman! ’ ” 

The pasha gazed at his beautiful wife and slowly 
unbent his awful eyebrows. Ah, Cherifa,” he 
said, ^^you on whom Allah has lavished his grace, 
making you whiter than silver money, you shall 
have many lengths of this stuff. Send your old 
Jewess to the shop of Si Mohamed al Frai and tell 
him the pasha will pay at the first of the harvest.” 


HORSE BOUGHT LELLA A DRESS 11 

The pasha^s wife looked suddenly ready to cry 
and ready to throw something. “ But old Friha 
has been to the shop of that wretched Si Mohamed 
al Frai,” she mourned, and he says he will not 
give her more cloth, no, not until the wife of 
Hakem sends money! ” 

Hakem, the pasha turned a queer interesting let¬ 
tuce colour, and his long pale fingers began to 
twitch in fury. So! ’’ he fumed, Si Mohamed 
laughs at the wife of Hakem! May he die like a 
pig, so help me all the Saints of Islam, may peace 
be upon them! ’’ Then he turned and left the 
room. 

How I do blush to tell you what the pasha did 
then. Just because Leila wanted a new dress, he 
did do something perfectly awful. And it wasn’t 
as if Leila’s dress was to be made up by a different 
pattern from her old dress. Oh, no! It was to be 
cut exactly like her grandmother’s and her mother’s, 
and everybody else’s dress; a perfectly tremendous 
kimono, with a belt and a turban and no more 
style than your mother’s rag-bag. I don’t mean 
Leila would look ragged, but when she was all 
dressed up she would look exactly like your 
mother’s new rag-bag, just ready to hang in the 
attic! And her father made all that muss, just for 
that! 

He was a smart old pasha or he never would have 
thought of it. He knew that until the next harvest 
he could not squeeze any more money out of the 


12 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


town for Lis expenses. The last harvest had been 
bad. That had meant less money, and now the 
tribesmen of the country very near by threatened 
mutiny. That meant more expense, just when the 
pasha needed every cent for his own family. And 
family! why he had more immediate children than 
the Old Woman in the Shoe ever heard of. Still, 
they could hardly be spanked and sent to bed, even 
if they did have their broth for the next two months 

without any bread. And now Leila’s dress- 

He really needed ten or fifteen thousand dollars, 
but how should he raise even a silly little sum like 
that ? 

He thought and thought. The cloth merchants 
had been so mean—they would not even trust him 

with enough cloth for Leila’s dress-. Wouldn’t 

it be very nice and funny if somehow that old 
Si Mohamed al Frai, the cloth merchant, 
could be got to give Leila her dress, and be 
made ridiculous doing it?—Yes, but how? The 
wicked old pasha drew his eyebrows together until 
they looked like a straight black buckle to buckle 
dov/n his nose. Ha! Ha! He had it! Horses! 
Si Mohamed rode a fat mule through the streets 
when he did not walk. But he would rather die 
than ride a horse. No town man liked horses. 
Even the pasha felt that way. The pasha owned 
one stallion, it is true, a miserable gray beast that 
fought every other horse it met and always tried 
to throw its rider. The pasha shivered at lie mere 




HORSE BOUGHT BELLA A DRESS 13 


thought of the animal. Being a Moorish towns¬ 
man is different from being an Arab of the country. 
And suppose the Arab tribes should be in revolt! 
Ha ! Ha! He had it, his nice, funny plan. He 
snickered and went to bed. 

Hext morning everybody in town knew that there 
was danger I The surrounding tribes, everybody 
heard, had revolted. They threatened to sweep 
down upon the city. Of course the city walls might 
defend the town, but the suburbs must be defended. 
Horsemen must go straight out,—patrol the 
gardens, the fields—or there would be no next 
harvest, and the city would starve! The pasha had 
men to patrol the fields, but no horses! So each 
city merchant must send the pasha one horse 1 And 
be quick about it! 

Hot one of the merchants owned a horse, or 
wanted to own one. Hor did a single merchant 
want to buy a horse either! So for three days 
nothing happened. 

On the night of the fourth day, about half-past 
ten or eleven o’clock, that old dry goods merchant. 
Si Mohamed, was just kicking off his nice red slip¬ 
pers with the curled-up toes, wdien the most hor¬ 
rible knocking began on his nail-studded door. His 
face turned first red, then white, and then blue, and 
he pulled his bed blanket around his shoulders and 
called out to know what in the mercy of Allah was 
wanted. 

Open in the name of the Pasha! ” 


14 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


So he shivered and shook vs^hile he drew bolts and 
turned keys, and stuck out his old head to ask what 
the pasha kindly wanted. 

We have come for your horse,’’ thundered the 
master of the pasha’s household, and as he said it 
a dozen wicked-looking soldiers closed in a circle 
about the door, like a dozen black crows. 

My horse ? ” shivered Si Mohamed feebly. 

Did not the pasha order a horse from you ? 
Are not the tribes in open revolt? You must send 
the pasha a horse by dawn! ” 

The old merchant looked at the soldiers and shiv¬ 
ered and shook. I have been searching for a 
horse,” he lied glibly. High and low, I have 
looked for a horse. I have left no stone unturned, 
but I cannot find one, so help me Allah and bring 
confusion to all his enemies! ” 

So you have no horse! ” The master of the 
pasha’s household and the soldiers drew closer. 
Then I have orders to arrest and imprison you! ” 
“ Help me! Pity me! ” screamed Si Mohamed. 
To-morrow I will find one! ” 

To-morrow is too late! Come with me! ” 

Help! Pity 1 Save me! ” screamed the mer¬ 
chant again, and began to cry real tears into his 
blanket. You are a true and generous man! 
Think of your old father! Soften your heart, I 
pray you I ” 

The pasha’s servant stopped and looked down at 
the old merchant, who had thrown himself in trop- 


HORSE BOUGHT BELLA A DRESS 15 


ical abandonment at bis feet. Then be smiled to 
bimself and said, And if I pity yon, bow will that 
belp ? Do you want me to sacrifice my own horse to 
you, so that you may band it over to the pasba ? ’’ 
The merchant kissed the servant’s shoes. Yes! 
Yes! ” be cried. Ob, worthy man, bow much will 
you take for your horse ? ” 

Two hundred and ninety dollars! ” 

Two hundred and ninety dollars! ” shrieked Si 
Mohamed, and jumped to his feet as if he had been 
stung by two hundred and ninety wasps. Impos¬ 
sible! Where would I find so huge a sum? Who 
would lend it to a miserable old man like me ? Oh, 
kind and just sir, have pity 1 ” 

The pasha’s servant looked at the old man as 
much as to say, All right for you, you dear old 
thing! ” Then turning to the soldiers, Arrest this 
man ! ” he commanded. 

The twelve soldiers grabbed him by his blanket. 
Stop! 'Help! Oh, saints of Islam help me to 
find two hundred and ninety dollars for this ava¬ 
ricious man! Ho! Stop ! I will pay! ” He fled 
indoors without his blanket, and after a second re¬ 
appeared, carrying a dirty little bag. Two hun¬ 
dred and ninety dollars! ” he moaned through his 
trembly old nose, which sounded like a trombone. 

The master of the pasha’s household opened the 
bag and counted the money. Then he ordered the 
soldiers to bring forward the horse. Si Mohamed 
took the animal gingerly by the rope. It was of a 


16 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


pasty gray colour, with eyes that burned like hot 
coals in the night. As Si Mohamed took hold of 
the rope it gave a fiendish neigh and reared. Si 
Mohamed dropped it and screamed, rushing into 
his doorway. 

See here! " the servant scolded, that is no 
way to act. Take the horse at once or he will run 
away, and then what will you do ? ” 

Can I take him into my carpeted courtyard ? 
My house is full of women! Must I stand here and 
hold him all night? He will undoubtedly kill me 
if I touch him! " And the old merchant began to 
sob the most heartrending tears all over his under¬ 
skirts. 

Perhaps," hesitated the servant, I could take 
him to the pasha’s stables for you. That is, if you 
could afford to pay me a little extra for my 
trouble! " 

Yes! Yes! " Si Mohamed agreed, and rushed 
back into the house. Take this, my good friend, 
my saviour," he cried, rushing out again, and 
squeezed another bag of money into the servant’s 
hands. 

The pasha’s servant took this bag and counted it. 
The soldiers took the horse. They also took the 
merchant’s blanket. Si Mohamed watched them go, 
and he gulped, but he never said a word. 

The next morning, bright and early, an old 
Jewess went to the shop of Si Mohamed al Frai and 
bought yards and yards of the loveliest white tulle. 


HORSE BOUGHT BELLA A DRESS 17 


all embroidered in garlands. There was plenty of 
money to pay for it, too. 

I do not know what the old merchant thought, but 
I do know that before noon he found out that every 
other merchant in the city last night had bought a 
gray horse for the pasha. That afternoon the pasha 
told the world that he had been able to make peace 
with the surrounding tribes. Then he ordered his 
horse to be brought from its stable. It was a vicious 
old thing. It stamped and neighed, and it looked 
like a regular nightmare. But the pasha smiled 
and rubbed his hands while he told his slave that, 
Ha! Ha! he should give that good beast a double 
portion of barley! ” 

Leila’s father was a smart man, wasn’t he ? But 
would you want a daddy like him? Well, neither 
would I! 


AFEICA 


II 

The Man With the Solid Gold Ribs 


W HEE I first heard of Ehodesia, I 
thought it was one of mj grand¬ 
mother’s comets. I had heard the 
word before, so I expected it was one of her old 
comets! 

She had always indulged her love of applied 
astronomy by dosing me with stars; so many stars 
after dinner, every night! 

I gulped ’em down, because it was cold on winter 
evenings when she was fondest of taking me out 
on the door-step to get ’em applied to me, and I 
hated to stay a second longer than I had to. 

It had become a habit with me, when anybody 
asked me a difficult word which sounded vaguely 
familiar, to say I thought it was a star in the con¬ 
stellation of Orion or something, and usually it 
was. But this time it wasn’t. 

My grandmother, who always helps me with my 
geography after school, not because I ask her to, 
but because she has as great a passion for applying 

continents to me as stars, was terribly upset that 

18 


THE MAN WITH SOLID GOLD RIBS la 


I Lad RLodesia in my Lead as a comet. You would 
tLink I Lad done damage to tLe Milky Way. SLe 
said I was to find every item I could aLout RLo- 
desia in tLe newspapers and bring it to Ler! And 
I was to look it up on tLe map! I did look it up 
on tLe map, but it wasn’t tLere! TLen my grand- 
motLer looked it up, and tLere it was down in 
Africa, just ready to slide into tLe Indian Ocean! 
SLe can do things like that. She’s pointed out 
stars to me that I’ve read astronomers can’t see 
without a hundred-foot telescope lens,—Arcterus, 
and Betelgeuse, and Mars, I think. 

Of course all this sounds as if it Lad nothing to 
do with the man who Lad gold ribs and a platinum 
skull, but it comes right in where she asked me to 
find every item I could about Rhodesia in the 
newspapers. 

I must tell you, however, that since I was six I 
Lave taken a heathenish joy in writing prose and 
poetry. Let no one slide over this remark with a 
light eye. If you’ve ever had the same experience 
you know that inspiration always comes just as you 
begin to comb your hair for school mornings, and 
just when you ought to be studying your geography 
nights. 

My grandmother was very much annoyed that I 
should indulge in this primitive pastime, and so on 
the historic evening when she found me creating a 
pale young orphan behind the covers of my geog¬ 
raphy she put a ban and a taboo upon all further 


20 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


literary work. Until you know all tke capitals 
of all the states in the United States/’ she amended. 
As I saw no hope of ever knowing all the capitals 
at one time, I immediately wound up the affairs 
of my orphan, who had been wandering vaguely 
about Druid woods, by allowing her to be consumed 
by a prehistoric animal with a chilly-sounding 
name, which I coined, but have since forgotten. 

I then set to work to comb the newspapers for 
Rhodesia. And such is the good fortune of the in¬ 
nocent, tliat almost at once I found two items which 
exactly suited my needs. The first item had noth¬ 
ing to do with Rhodesia, but for purposes of my 
own I cut it out and pinned it into my forbidden 
composition book, the next page after the chilly 
orphan’s demise. 

You notice that I did not take this news item to 
my grandmother. It wasnT about Rhodesia, any¬ 
way. It read like this: 

^^Has Platinum Skull and Solid Gold Ribs 

Berlin, Feb. 22.—Breslau, in Silicia, boasts of 
a citizen who is outfitted with a set of golden ribs, 
and every stranger who visits the city is regaled 
with the story of this man and his abnormal 
anatomy. 

While at work on the roof of a three-story 
house he was knocked off his feet by a strong gust 
of wind and dropped to the ground. The physi¬ 
cians diagnosed his case as hopeless, his skull hav¬ 
ing been badly fractured and all of his ribs with 
the exception of one, completely crushed. 


THE MAN WITH SOLID GOLD RIBS 21 


^^After lying in the hospital for four years, he 
was removed to a surgical clinic where a platinum 
plate was inserted into his skull and new ribs made 
of gold were carefully fastened into place. This 
delicate process of grafting occupied nearly three 
years, after which the man was dismissed and has 
since been employed by a cigar factory. 

Not having the means of undergoing an opera¬ 
tion involving large quantities of the two costliest 
metals, gold and platinum, the man applied to his 
trades union, which agreed to advance the money 
on the condition that their comrade’s family give a 
written pledge that upon his death the metals 
would revert to the association. 

The man is still living, and the trades union 
now looks upon him as a peripatetic gold mine, 
owing to the sharp advance made in all precious 
metals, hut especially platinum, by reason of the 
war. , 

It is said the man lives in constant fear of 
being kidnapped since learning of the daily so-called 
^ metal thefts ’ reported from Berlin and other Ger¬ 
man centers.” 

This was rich. It was perfectly rich. I thought 
so then, and I still think so, and it would have 
been a crime not to have outfitted a man like that 
with a mighty jazzy plot. Right there I found 
my second news item. This one was about Rho¬ 
desia, but I didn’t take it dutifully to my grand¬ 
mother either. I pinned it in the book beside my 
man with gold ribs. It read like this: 


22 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Bukned Mai^ Alive to Please God 

Sacrifice of Son by Fatber to End a Drought in 
Rhodesia is Reported 
(Special Correspondence of the News) 
London, Feb. 22.—Advices received from Bula¬ 
wayo indicate that the custom of human sacrifice to 
allay the wrath of the gods still exists in Rhodesia. 

“ It is reported that the elders of the Mtawara 
tribe, alarmed at the drought and poor crops, con¬ 
sulted the rain doctor, and decided on what they 
claim to be the never-failing expedient of human 
sacrifice by burning. The lot fell on a native who 
was discovered to be the son of the rain doctor, 
who, however, proceeded with the sacrifice. The 
struggling man was bound and burned alive. Di¬ 
rectly life was extinct heavy rains began. 

The celebrations of the success of the sacrifice 
were interrupted by the arrival of the police. The 
elated tribe, not aware of having done wrong, 
showed the police the charred remains of the vic¬ 
tim and told them of previous occasions on which 
similar sacrifices had been equally successful, the 
last one mentioned being in 1917. 

They assert that the ^ rain spirit ’ whose name 
is Mwari, lives in their district. The local para¬ 
mount chief is said to remember seventy-two 
natives who have been burned as rain sacrifices. 

Many natives are reported to have been com¬ 
mitted for trial. The scene of the sacrifice is said 
to be Chicangos Kraal on the Portuguese border 
in Southern Rhodesia.’’ 

Well, this was perfectly rich, too. I could have 
shrieked for joy. Then I grabbed a pencil, and 
the man with gold ribs, the rain spirit and I all 


THE MAN WITH SOLID GOLD RIBS 23 


began to ferment together. I wrote a gorgeous 
masterpiece in about forty-eight minutes, the story 
of a man with gold ribs down in Rhodesia, who, 
of course, was burned alive. If youVe ever tried 
to write for publication (being accepted is a differ¬ 
ent proposition) you realize how simple it was for 
me to transfer the hero of Silicia to Rhodesia. 

After I had the man burned up and quite ex¬ 
tinct, I let the police poke among the ashes for his 
gold ribs awhile. Then I went at my geography, 
and after I’d learned the capitals of the North At¬ 
lantic and Middle Atlantic States, I called it 
a day. 

That night right after dinner I said, Grandma, 
listen to this story I been writing! ” 

Do you Icnow the cap -” she began with 

thunderous eyes. 

I know ’em in chunks and installments,” I in¬ 
terrupted, and I said ’em aloud, the North and 
Middle ones, and then she said she’d listen. 

The name of it is: ^ The Man With the Solid 
Gold Ribs.’ ” I told her. 

What ? ” said grandmother. I told her again 
and then I read it. 

Well, she listened with that expression on her 
face which you always expect a critic to wear. I 
always think of critics as the twelve sons of Jacob 
sitting on their thrones and judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel, the hateful things! 



24 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


Most anything would be better! " grandmotber 
remarked grandly, wben I bad finished. 

Why would it ? ” I snapped testily. But T 
was quite old enough to know, even then, that if 
you let your story percolate through a critic, 
Postum Cereal is the result, or something equally 
healthful and horrid tasting. 

You are just like me," grandmother went on. 

I was a very rash child." 

Well, never mind that," I said, but what's 
the matter^ with my story ? " 

It is so utterly impossible," she said, and 
sighed. In the first place doctors don't graft gold 
ribs, and in the second place the Rhodesians don't 
burn their citizens alive! " 

Don't they, then ? " 7 now remarked grandly 
in turn, and I produced those two newspaper clip¬ 
pings and shoved them under her nose. Read 
these! I said in triumph. 

She read 'em, and she sat musing a good while 
after, and didn't notice what I was about. In that 
interval I had resurrected my pale young orphan, 
snatched her from the jaws of the prehistoric mon¬ 
ster, sent a cave man hurtling toward her with his 
weighty javelin poised at the beast, and a terrible 
pliocene yell issuing from his lips. 

That's all, only grandmother still sticks out 
about any Rhodesian man having gold ribs. Maybe 


THE MAN WITH SOLID GOLD RIBS 25 


it isn’t done in South Africa, but if it could he 
managed in Germany, I should think it could any¬ 
where, and any writer knows that you’ve got to 
allow for a little leeway, now and then. I wish 
any critic did. 


AFEICA 


III 

The Drum and the Poison Bean 

I T must have begun when Evindi was a little 
girl and wore a bustle of dried grasses at her 
back, like every other little girl. It was a 
very dressy bustle, all coloured black and orange, 
and it made a proud little rustling sound against 
her oiled thighs as she walked in the hot sunshine. 
In fact, if Evindi had been a little London girl, 
instead of a little African girl, she would have 
thought her bustle looked exactly like a cabby 
horse’s tail—only a cabby horse never has a tail 
black and orange at the same time! 

Evindi, then, seemed exactly like every other girl 
that she knew. She was going to be married to a 
proud old Chief of another village. He had paid 
not only ivory tusks, but goats, sheep and dogs for 
Evindi, though not quite as much as her father had 
asked! Evindi was glad to be married to this 
Chief for two reasons. The first one was, that she 
would not be a stranger in this new town, for her 
older sister was already the Chief’s favourite wife. 

The second reason was that Evindi’s older brother 

26 


THE DRUM AND THE POISON BEAN 27 


made a regular little slave of her. Of course every 
girl is her brother’s thing”—always subject to 
his will, and Evindi’s brother was not a meek lit¬ 
tle hoy! 

At such an important time in her life, Evindi, 
like everybody else, felt the need of some good-luck 
spirit to attend her. She had no God she could 
pray to, for Zamhee, the Great-Great, the Creator, 
had long since gone away and forgotten the people. 
And although the world was full of Spirits, they 
were unfriendly spirits. They did not like, or 
want women. Little girls must not dare come into 
'the presence of an idol! So the best thing for 
Evindi to do was to have her fortune told. 

There was an old woman of Evindi’s village who 
told the most exciting fortunes, for she was wise 
in the things of witchcraft. And it must have 
been, then, while Evindi clung to the words of this 
woman, that all which was to happen afterwards, 
was made possible. 

The old woman put a porcupine’s quill out on a 
board, and a piece of a leopard’s hide, and a stone 
from a crocodile’s stomach, and a piece of a hawk, 
and a crystal. Over these she shook a lot of ant- 
eater’s scales marked with such questions as: 
Shall I marry ? ” Shall I buy that cow ? ” 
Shall I quit drinking rum ? ” The way the scales 
fell over the porcupine quill, the leopard’s skin and 
all the rest, decided forever how things would turn 
out! Evindi looked at her fortune spread out be- 


28 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


fore her, and oh, but she was scared! Here she was, 
going out of all the world she knew—into all the 
strange world she didn't know! She was so fright¬ 
ened that at first she could not hear what the old 
woman said. And when she did hear, she was 
much too frightened to move. The old woman said 
—oh, honestly, the old woman must have had 
jaundice and seen through yellow eyes that day!— 
she said that Evindi never would he happy in her 
married life. That only one happiness would come 
to her! That she would he in great peril, and that 
if she ever saw her native town again she could 
thank her lucky moon! 

Evindi had to go twenty miles down the Bulu 
path toward the sunrising, on the trail to her bus- 
hand's town, with ijhose dreadful words ringing in 
her ears. Her family followed her, singing the 
songs of marriage, and Evindi was afraid. From 
that day, when she came to the house of strange 
women, the older wives of her husband, she was 
afraid. She had almost forgotten her sister, the 
old Chief’s favourite, who had grown very fat, and 
a darker brown, and had many children. Of course 
the other wives did not like Evindi much, and her 
sister did not like her at all. How did she know 
but Evindi would he the favourite wife now ? She 
was so much younger! So, although Evindi had 
escaped from her bossy brother, who still said the 
Chief had not paid goats enough for Evindi, and 
that some day he was going to call her back to her 


THE DRUM AND THE POISON BEAN 29 


native kraal, she was not happy. She was forever 
looking for the awful thing which was to happen 
to her, and trying witch spells to keep it away. 

The old witch had told Evindi, however^ that 
there was one great happiness to come into her life. 
And when her baby boy was born, little Fozo’o, 
Evindi knew that this had happened. Oh, he was 
a splendid baby! Evindi hung the tiny horn of the 
pigmy antelope about his neck to protect him from 
danger! She also took him one secret night out 
alone, under the full moon. She held a lighted 
torch in her other hand, and dared all the enemies 
of her child to harm him! Then she extinguished 
the torch, to show how all the enemies of her child 
should be extinguished! And she prayed that her 
boy might shine with such splendour as shone the 
moon, even with such great glory! Was she not 
a wise Evindi, so to protect her little boy? Ah, 
and as he grew older she taught him to make a little 
offering of grass or a leaf he had spit upon, to every 
tree trunk which leaned over the path, and every 
tower-house built by ants! And by so doing, Fozo’o 
certainly grew to be the strongest, finest boy of all 
his father’s children. The old Chief, his father, 
loved him above everybody and everything, and for 
that reason all the other boys hated him, and the 
boys’ mothers hated Evindi. So it was until 
Fozo’o came to his tenth year. 

In that year Fozo’o, who never had been at all 
fussy about clothes, and who had worn nothing 


30 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


until lie was six, and after that sometimes a little 
loin cloth his mother made of bark, wanted a real 
loin cloth of red red cloth, such as you have to buy 
from traders at the coast. 

It took three days to go to the coast to shop, and 
the way lay through the Bulu forest. In the for¬ 
est, feeling perfectly at home and sometimes in¬ 
quisitive, were monkeys, snakes, deer, wild cattle, 
and leopards. No lions! No tigers! Yet enough 
animals to keep a person busy, if they all became 
interested in him at the same time! So when Fozo’o 
wanted a piece of red cloth, he had to wait until 
other boys of the village w^anted some too, and made 
so much fuss about it that the Chief would send a 
carrier, if there was little to buy, and two or three 
carriers if there was much to bring home. There 
would be kettles wanted at the last minute, and 
matches, and all sorts of things which one buys of 
the white men these days! 

How could Evindi know that Fozo’o’s little red 
loin cloth was to bring her all her trouble? She 
wanted him to have it! He was such a big boy 
now! It was like getting one’s first pair of long 
trousers! All the other mothers wanted their sons 
to have red loin cloths, too! They all hated 
Evindi! Their sons all hated Fozo’o! Nobody 
will ever know whether those other wives got to¬ 
gether and planned it, or what. But anyway, when 
the bearers returned from the coast with the yards 
of red cloth, and the cloth was measured off, it was 


THE DRUM AND THE POISON BEAN 31 


found that there was enough for every single boy 
but Fozo’o! Measure it whatever way you wanted 
to, and Evindi did measure it every way you ever 
heard of, there was not one speck, not one thread 
of a loin cloth for Fozo’o! The monkeys from the 
forest, who had followed the bearers back, sat over 
her head and watched Evindi try to find a speck 
of cloth large enough for Eozo’o. And the women 
watched. And they all chattered and laughed, 
monkeys and wives together. 

The men did not notice. Eor all they thought 
of was the fire water, which they had sent for in 
great jugs, as red as the cloth, and as strong! And 
all that night while Evindi and Fozo’o sat apart 
in hate and fury, the town drank the fire water and 
danced. The dance-drum went thump! thump! 
thump! for hours and hours. The leading female 
ballet did her stuff in the middle of a ring of 5,000, 
more or less, dancing boys, and there were tom¬ 
toms and ga-gomas and tooth-ticklers, and a won¬ 
derful ladder with tuned rungs which made a series 
of shrieks when rightly pounded, besides ever so 
many empty turtle shells rattling with pebbles. 
Why, you could hear a jazz band like that from 
Brooklyn Bridge to Grant’s Tomb! Fozo’o, who 
knew how to beat a drum, kept time with his toes, 
hour after hour, while he sat in his mother’s round 
grass house. 

Of course, when Fozo’o knew how to beat a 
drum, that meant the dance drum, which looked 


32 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


like an American drum. But tkere was the war 
drum, which looked like a horse’s watering-trough 
and which he was never allowed to touch. There 
was also the drum which was kept in the Chief’s 
Palaver house which Fozo’o knew about, too. That 
was the Carrier’s drum, and was shaped like a 
horseshoe made of tin horns with a handle. The 
wonderful thing about that drum was that it was 
like a radio set for twenty miles around. All you 
Jiad to do was to call a man by his drum name,” 
with so many taps of the Carrier’s drum, and tell 
him what you wanted in drum language, with just 
so many more taps, and he would hear you and un¬ 
derstand ! That drum is worn by a cord fastened 
around the neck, and no chief is ever without one. 
But of course on that wild night nobody thought 
about any drum hut the dance drum. 

Next morning there was a great stillness through 
the village. Everybody hut Evindi and Eozo’o had 
drank fire water, and there was much sleepiness 
and gTunting and snoring, and growling and quar¬ 
reling. The quarreling began in little whispers 
and whimpers, but gi’adually, as everybody awoke, 
it became louder, and when everybody had rubbed 
their eyes it was remembered about Fozo’o and the 
little red loin cloth. The women jeered at Evindi 
about it, and the boys jeered at Fozo’o! And then 
suddenly their jeers became growls and their growls 
a terrible long sound which woke even the Chief. 

The cloth—the red loin cloth—for all the boys— 


THE DRUM AND THE POISON BEAN 33 


was gone! They looked in every house, in the 
Palaver house! They looked in every corner! It 
was gone, all of it! There were a few red threads 
caught on the rough bark of the tree under which 
Evindi had stood trying to measure out enough 
cloth for Eozo’o when the women and monkeys 
watched and laughed at her! Clearly Evindi had 
stolen hack in the night and taken it! Evindi, who 
had not danced last night! The only thing to do, 
of course, was to prove it, and the way to prove it 
was to give Evindi trial by the poison bean. The 
poison bean is deadly poison. You make a drink 
of the poison bean and then give it to the person 
you suspect, and if they drink it and live they are 
innocent, but if they drink it and die they are 
guilty! None of those who drank the poison bean 
ever lived, the guilty creatures! And that’s what 
they decided to do to Evindi. 

Evindi knew she had not taken the red cloth, 
though she wished she had! Probably one of the 
monkeys had stolen it! But who could follow and 
bring a monkey back to justice? Evindi thought 
over all her life, and all that the old witch lady had 
told her, and she saw it was true. She must die! 
She wished now that she had never left her home 
and her bossy brother. Eozo’o, ’^vho sat near her, 
crying, for he loved his mother, heard her lament¬ 
ing for her old home, and suddenly an idea came 
into his head. He did not tell his mother, how¬ 
ever, but he got up and left her. 


34 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


She cried after him. Could he not sit beside her 
the last day of the world ? Was she to be deserted 
in her hour of trial? Oh, oh, oh, she could not 
bear it! She could not bear it! 

Fozo’o ran to the Palaver house, though all the 
men had finished talking. They had said his 
mother should take the poison bean just as the sun 
came up next morning. It was all decided. There 
was no more to say. Besides, they all had head¬ 
aches from last night. 

By-and-by all the town slept except those who 
watched Evindi. Fozo’o waited and waited. Then 
he took the drum from the Palaver house and hung 
it around his neck, and ran out into the forest. He 
climbed a tree. He began to beat the Carrier’s 
drum. At night there are always Carriers upon 
the forest trails and thev call to one another. Who 

t/ 

was to know that little Fozo’o was not one of these ? 
He called a drum name, it is true. 

Elephant Killer! Elephant Killer! ” the drum 
called. There was no man with the drum name of 
Elephant Killer in that village. Whom did he 
call ? Only Evindi, lying alone in the dark beside 
her watchers, understood. Only to Fozo’o had she 
told of Elephant Killer, ” her horrid brother! 
Would her brother hear the little boy’s drum ? 
Would he understand? Would he come? And if 
he came, would he save her? All night Fozo’o 
drummed from his tree, Come Elephant Killer! 
Come Elephant Killer! Save your sister! Come 


THE DRUM AND THE POISON BEAN 35 


before day or you cannot save your sister! Come, 
Elephant Killer! Come! ’’ 

Was Elephant Killer awake? Would he hear? 
Was he in his village, even, or had he gone on the 
warpath, maybe? Was he, perhaps, even dead him¬ 
self ? Oh, drum! drum! drum! All night, drum! 
drum! drum! 

It was almost daybreak. Already the Chief was 
stirring. The village made little noises of waking. 
Evindi, whom the ChieUs other wives liked very 
little, and whose favourite wife did not like at all, 
was to take the poison bean this exciting morning! 
No wonder everybody was up early. But suddenly 
the favourite wife stopped to listen. She was 
EvindPs sister, remember. She had not forgotten 
the drum name of Evindi’s brother. 

Listen! ’’ she said to the Chief. Who is 
drumming ? ” He listened, and it seemed to him 
that the air was full of the sound: “ Elephant 
Killer, Come! Elephant Killer, Come! 

The drum name of my brother,’’ said the 
favourite wife. 

Of course that meant that the Chief should pre¬ 
pare the poison bean and make Evindi drink it be¬ 
fore her brother could get there and stop things. 

Elephant Killer, come! Elephant Killer, 

come! ” 

The cup of poison was ready! 

Elephant Killer, come! Elephant Killer, 

come! ” 


36 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


They held it to Evindi's lip. 

Elephant Killer- Elephant Killer- 

The sun was up! It broke through the trees with 
a glint of red, and a great noise. A rush I A roar I 
A scream as the cup fell untasted from Evindi's 
poor lips. The Elephant Killer had come indeed! 
He rushed in with the first of the sunlight through 
the trees to fetch Evindi home. 




AFEICA’ 


IV 

The Soul-Trinket of Maryia 

T he gossips of the village said certainly 
that Maryia meant to kill the little Mo¬ 
hammedan tailor, because he wanted to 
take away her soul. 

How this was unreasonable of Maryia, the 
heathen, the African! Who ever had told Maryia 
that she might ever expect to be invited to enjoy 
any sort of Heaven ? Who ? Perhaps the village 
had whispered night-times of the shadow of one’s 
self, the thing none could see, yet which was more 
one’s self than one’s ribs! But who knew ? Cer¬ 
tainly not the village, which kept its day-eyes glued 
to the things of eating, jDf selling women, and of 
war! 

Maryia was a huge person, with immense hands. 
She dressed her hair with red clay and grease 
when she wanted to look beautiful. And how any 
woman who rubs clay and grease in her hair as an 
act of beauty, can think she has a soul, is beyond 
me. But how a woman who quarrels with her 
neighbours, and especially with a neighbour lady 

31 


38 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


like Kumbundu, and finds fault with the very way 
the leaves hang on the trees, and then wants to live 
forever—^well, I lay that to the contrariness of 
woman. 

I do not suppose Maryia regarded her soul as 
more than a trinket. Yet if it were only that, she 
treasured it, as I have seen a woman treasure a 
thin wire bracelet with a little ten-cent bangle upon 
it. And the little Mohammedan tailor dared try to 
take it away from her! He deliberately closed the 
narrow doors of his doctrine upon her. A woman, 
he said, had no soul. He held the door of his 
faith open only wide enough for the men to squeeze 
through. 

He had come to the village, little Mustafa the 
tailor, riding a salted horse, his stout cart with its 
four-mule team carrying his sewing-machine behind 
him. Nobody had asked him to come or ever had 
seen him before. But everybody knew at once, that 
because he was a Mohammedan, he was a person of 
special importance, and privileged with the English 
government. Therefore a person to be feared! A 
person who could get you thrown into jail upon 
the sketchiest of excuses, such as—^because you 
went to the school of a missionary!—or somebody 
thought you did—or said some day you might! 
For some wise reason known only to the heart of 
the English government, all Mohammedans in 
Africa find special favour! 

Therefore, when Mustafa rode into the village, in 


THE SOUL-TRINKET OF MARYIA 39 


is gown of white lawn gathered full from his 
shoulders to his ankles, everybody but Maryia was 
much concerned. To gain his favour, they immedi¬ 
ately set to work to build him a house. Maryia, 
however, refused to help. Though her two hands, 
when she put them together, were almost the size 
of a roof, she would not help! She only stood and 
glared at Mustafa. 

She hated him intensely and at once. She did 
not know why. But as she had a frightful dis¬ 
position and was liable to hate the most delightful 
things at a moment’s notice, this did not count 
against Mustafa for a moment. His face was of 
the most interesting shade of tan, and made as 
stylish a contrast to the people of Maryia’s village 
as sand-coloured cuffs make on a chocolate sweater. 
Maryia, however, loathed his colour, and her face 
lighted up into such a horrid brilliance that Mus¬ 
tafa at once noticed her. He saw her great hands, 
as she glared at him, those hands with which she 
planted mealies in the field, jerk open and shut, 
open and shut, as though she were trying to stran¬ 
gle something. Mustafa’s face grew paler than 
ever. One might have thought he was afraid of 
Maryia. 

They settled Mustafa’s sewing-machine in his 
house, and then crowded about his door to see him 
sew. Even Maryia followed the other women to 
see the strange machine which chewed thread and 


40 STORIES FROM GROUND THE WORLD 


purred up and down a piece of clotla^ biting little 
stitches into it faster than a lion runs! 

While Mustafa sewed he talked to the women. 
He had a beautiful voice, the kind that tickles up 
and down jour spine and makes you chilly. Mus- 
tafa^s voice would have been in much demand at 
Camp Meetings if he had been a Methodist. As, 
unfortunately, he was not a Methodist, he made the 
best of things, and introduced God to the women 
by the name of Allah! He talked Allah to the 
women every day with his beautiful voice, Allah, 
the only God, and Mohammed, his prophet! This 
was stingy doctrine after the multitude of idols and 
spirits an African may conjure with. But there 
was nothing stingy about the prayers Mustafa 
had to say to this Being. At the most surprising 
hours Mustafa had to drop his stitching and mas¬ 
sage his face, his hands, his arms and legs, stroke 
after stroke with water. This was a beginning of 
the things of his prayers. Followed calisthenic 
bowings to the sun rising. Followed the obeisance 
of his voice to the great silence which they say is 
the voice of God! 

So you can see with what superhuman industry 
Mustafa had to devote himself to his sewing-ma¬ 
chine in the off hours of his prayers to get anything 
done. Probably he was related to one of those 
wiry, whirling dervishes, who take a reckless de¬ 
light in naming the ninety-nine names of Allah 
while dancing a spin-tail dance! 


THE SOUL-TRINKET OF MARYIA 41 


However, Mustafa for all Lis busyness, was an 
obliging person. He sewed the women’s strips of 
cloth together for them. He asked them to let him! 
And if the son of one of them wished to come to 
him and learn the Koran, that hoy was sure of Eng¬ 
lish favour, maybe a job in the city! Who could 
tell? The women of the village began to see that 
it meant everything to their sons to learn the 
Koran-book of Mustafa. And if, when the little 
tailor stitched long seams for the women on his 
sewing-machine, what if he stitolied their souls 
away ? 

Maryia had a son. He was big. He was beauti¬ 
ful. He was twelve years old, but he looked fifteen. 
But Maryia’s neighbour-lady, Kumbundu, whom 
she hated, also had a son. He was big and also 
beautiful, and he was eleven. But he looked at 
least fourteen-and-a-half I When these two boys 
went on the elephant hunt together there was al¬ 
ways a fury between them as to which should first 
draw blood from the elephant. In the hunt it is 
law that the boy who first draws blood owns the 
elephant. The man who kills it only gets the hind 
leg. When these two boys cured skins, there was 
always a fierceness and striving about it. When 
these two boys took wire and melted it and made 
little hammered and punched brass bowls, great was 
their rivalry; and when they sat apart to em¬ 
broider (girls never embroider in Africa, boys 
only, or men) there was the wildest competition 


42 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


from tlie first needle to tlie last. Maryia’s friends 
said that certainly her son was the wisest in the 
things of hunting and skilled hand work, and Kum- 
bundu's friends said exactly the same of her son. 

The coming of the sewing-machine man changed 
all this. Would Maryia allow her son to learn the 
things of the Koran? Would Kumbundu allow 
hers ? 

Kumbundu would and did. It would make a 
fine man of her son, and what did she care for her 
soul? Her village idols did not receive women 
kindly, and the unseen spirits required too much 
time. You must do this and you must do that to 
unbind evil spells. This new religion was more 
restful. It put a big Allah into the sky like a sun. 
It put a big Mohammed into the sky like a moon. 
It gave your son position in life. He became like 
a star—a thing above! What mother could resist ? 

But Maryia, perhaps because instinctively she 
fought all things in life, fought also against this. 

I do not believe this crooked little man's Allah! " 
she said bitterly. How can he know so much—a 
little tailor, not forty years old? Has he lived in 
the old days and talked with this Allah? Has he 
ever laid eye on that Mohammed, even? How, 
then, is he so sure ? " 

He has the book, Maryia! ” said her awed 
neighbours, the words of the book which fell from 
heaven, and which Mohammed, the Prophet, opened 
his ears to hear! " 


THE SOUL-TRINKET OF MARYIA 43 


Marjia was unconviiiced at this, but a little 
uneasy. 

Come here, Kamba,” said the mother, Kam- 
bundu, with a proud, showy smile, which made 
Maryia hate her more than ever. Come here, my 
son, and speak the things of the Koran the little 
sewing-machine man has taught you! ’’ 

Kamba was not displeased to shine even in that 
small local matter. ^ In the name of the merciful 
and compassionate God,’ ” he recited, ^ Say, 0, ye 
misbelievers! I do not serve what ye serve; nor 
will ye serve what I serve; nor will I serve what 
ye serve; nor will ye serve what I serve; ye have 
your religion, and I have my religion! ’ ” 

Hear that! ” said Kambundu. 

I hear nothing,” said Maryia, the hateful one, 
only a little rat-tat-tat of words which means 
nothing! ” But although she would rather have 
died than admit it, the words came into her ears 
again and again of nights, with their queer rhythm. 
They lay like a snare in her thoughts, to snare her 
soul away. Yet even then, she would not allow 
her son, who was growing big and strong and wise 
in the things of his village, to know one word of 
the Koran. 

It happened that in the hunting season an Eng¬ 
lishman came to the village. He spoke much with 
the little tailor, and he went out on hunts when the 
boys went. Now in three of these hunts the son 
of Maryia drew blood from an elephant, the first of 


44 STORIES FROM GROUND THE WORLD 


tlie boys, and it was not counted to him, but to 
Kamba. This made the son of Maryia exceedingly 
angry, and when be came borne from tbe bunt be 
told bis mother. 

Wby do you tell me ? ’’ Maryia stormed. ^ Am 
I to blame ? ” And ber son stormed back, Wby 
did you not let me learn of Mustafa, like Kamba 
and tbe other boys ? ’’ And bis mother answered 
back, What has that to do with killing ele¬ 
phants ? ’’ 

Then said Maryia’s son, It is told that Kamba 
is to go away with this Englishman, and earn shil¬ 
lings every week. Kamba is younger than I! 
And I must stay here and earn nothing! ” 

Is that because be learns the little words in tbe 
tailor’s book?” Maryia demanded. Yes,” said 
her son. So says everyone! ” 

Maryia sat doTO. She was trembling. She 
never had been so angiy before. Her great bands 
pawed the earth where she sat. A chicken came 
by, and she caught and wrung its neck in a way 
quite horrible to see. But she did not know it. 
Her ears, her eyes, her senses, were closed to all 
sounds except the warring in her heart. It went 
on, not for hours, but for days, this war between her 
love of her boy and her love of her soul. She did 
strange things, not knowing she did them, until the 
neighbours became afraid and said a demon pos¬ 
sessed her. She carried a knife at her belt. She 
rolled her eyes when any spoke with her. And at 


THE SOULrTRINKET OF MARYIA 45 


all times slie mumbled the name of Mustafa the 
little tailor. 

Kumbundu, her neighbour, kept close watch of 
Maryia, and others warned Mustafa. The little 
tailor never had forgotten how Marjia’s hands had 
jerked open and shut, open and shut, when she 
first saw him. Suppose some night she should come 
and take his little neck in her great hands ? He 
grew so nervous that he asked the chief to let him 
have a guard of men to watch his house at night. 
But of course Marjia did not know this. 

One night blacker than her thoughts, she crept 
out of her house alone. Hothing moved, only the 
stars above, and Marjia on her hands and knees. 
The eyes of men do not shine in the dark, or Maryia 
would have seen many of them staring at her. She 
came to the little grass house of the tailor. She 
felt for the opening of the door. She could not 
tell whether the wind was rustling in her ears, or 
her own breathing. Mustafa,’’ she called in a 
little whisper. There was a movement within. 
There was a movement without. Mustafa,” she 
breathed again, it is only Maryia, of the women, 
who would speak with you! ” Again there was a 
movement from within, and a voice said, Speak, 
but come no closer! ” 

Master,” said Maryia, it is of my son, I 
speak. Good little tailor, will you tell me the 
words of the Koran, that I may teach them to my 
son ? ” Send him to me,” said the voice within. 


46 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Good little tailor, do not ask that. The village 
would laugh at Marjia, who said he never should 
learn the words of the Koran. Come to the door, 
I praj, and teach me the words he must know and 
I will go hack and say them to him! ” 

Maryia had made her supreme sacrifice. She 
breathed fast and hard. She made as if to creep 
through the door. 

Hay-a-a! Hay-a-a! ’’ 

At that shout from behind her, Maryia felt her¬ 
self caught and hound. A dozen men shielded the 
little tailor from her. 

That was all the village ever saw of Maryia. It 
w^as whispered that Maryia was a witch. That this 
had been proved. That she had been about to 
change the little tailor into a lion, and had carried 
a knife at her belt to skin him with! Yes, truly! 
Where she disappeared to, and how, is only for 
witches to hear. But it is certain that her son now 
learns the Koran every day, and will yet, it is said, 
be a greater man than Kamba! Which should pay 
Maryia for losing her soul, since after all it was to 
her no more than a trinket! 


INDIA 


V 


The Littlest Tag-End Widow 


W HEN Kyambu was nine years old, 
his uncle gave him a present,—a big 
present, eighteen presents all in one! 
It wasn’t an electric train and it wasn’t a radio set 
or a pony! It wasn’t anything your uncle would 
give you when you were nine years old. No 
indeed! 

It was something which would cost a lot to feed 
—and it was alive, oh, I guess you’d think so to 
hear its voice I In fact it had eighteen voices, and 

thirty-six eyes and thirty-six ears- No! it 

wasn’t a menagerie. It was— Wives! 

Kyambu was exactly nine years old when his 
uncle gave him eighteen wives. They consisted of 
the uncle’s six aunts, eight sisters, and four daugh¬ 
ters ! The oldest aunt was fifty-one-or-two, and the 
youngest daughter was three months old and howled 
dreadfully. 

The old aunt hobbled in to the wedding and the 
baby was brought in on a brass platter. Certainly 
Kyambu’s uncle had cleaned house pretty thor¬ 
oughly, but they do things like that in India and 

never think a thing about it. 

47 



48 STOKIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Kyambu looked bis wives over after tbe cere¬ 
mony, but none of tbem interested him, so be went 
away and left tbem. He went out into tbe mango 
grove. And altbougb tbe weather was undeniably 
tropic, Kyambu shivered. Most any man shivers, 
they say, when be marries only one wife, but poor 
Kyambu, with all that collection, shivered for a very 
different reason. Through tbe fragrance of tbe trees 
be could see the sun shining queerly. It seemed to 
waver back and forth. Now it was close above 
him, and oh, bow hot and dry be felt! Now 
it bad swung far out of reach, and now bow miser¬ 
ably cold be was! If only Kyambu could have ex¬ 
changed bis wives for a real mother, who would have 
picked him up and put him to bed,—or if one of 
tbe eighteen wives had just put an ice-bag on bis 
head and rubbed bis little bodv with alcohol and 
then filled tbe hot-water bottle and called the doc¬ 
tor, things would probably have turned out more 
cheerfully. But Kyambu was only a very sick lit¬ 
tle boy with a horrid old uncle and those eighteen 
wives and lots of money. Perhaps Kyambu’s uncle 
had guessed how sick his little nephew was going 
to be and had hurried up the wedding on that ac¬ 
count. Certain it is that Kyambu should have 
been put to bed long before he was: He gTew 
sicker and sicker. His new wives turned pale on 
their own account when they heard how sick 
Kyambu was. Oh, you can’t guess what it means 
to be a widow in India! Nobody sends you little 


THE LITTLEST TAG-END WIDOW 49 


notes saying how sorry they are; nobody sends you 
roses; nobody comes and takes you by the hand for 
comfort. Oh, never! 

Kyambu’s eighteen wives were huddling around, 
waiting for news, and looking very dismal, when 
•Moothi, the three-months-old bride, began to howl. 
Moothi had the colic, but the seventeen other wives 
took her howling for a very bad sign, and they 
were not disappointed. Kyamhu had died. 

All the relatives trooped in. They snatched off 
the brides’ necklaces and earrings and anklets. 
They cut off their long widow hair. They took 
off their soft garments and gave them horrid 
scratchy old clothes to wear. And Moothi howled 
and howled. They did not give her any pepper¬ 
mint for the poor little ache in her tummy. She 
was a widow! 

Kyambu had died, don’t you understand, and his 
wives were to blame. They hadn’t poisoned him 
on the sly. I don’t mean that. Probably they 
never had seen him until they were introduced on 
their wedding day. But in India they believe that 
one lives his life over and over again. And in 
one of those other lives Kyambu’s eighteen wives 
must have done some dreadful sin! Now those 
eighteen dreadful sins had banded together, like 
the mean old things sins are, and laid for Kyambu 
and knocked him cold! Eeally, in India they be¬ 
lieve things like that. 

There was only one thing for those eighteen 


50 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


widows to do. They must go on pilgrimages. If 
they ever expected to have any peace, they must 
travel from one temple to another, pray to this 
idol, and that idol. Give the priests lots of money 
and melted butter—and then, maybe in fifty or 
sixty years they could expect a little peace. No 
real happiness. How could eighteen such horrible 
creatures ever expect happiness ? 

Well, they didn’t expect happiness, and the fifty- 
one-year-old-aunt-bride, what from twinges of 
rheumatism, and sleeplessness over trying to think 
what horrible sin she ever could have committed, 
fell in the well, or jumped in, or something, and 
there were only seventeen brides to begin the pil¬ 
grimage. Of course there was one bright spot to 
the affair. Kyambu had had so much money that; 
his widows could really offer a lot more money and 
melted butter to each idol. Why idols like butter 
is beyond me—^but it seems to oil up one’s prayers 
somehow, and get more of them said, and probably 
buy a body peace ten or fifteen years quicker. 
But even then it would take years—oh, such long, 
hot, far-from-home, dreary years. 

There was some question about taking Moothi 
along. Three-months-old hrides usually are sup¬ 
posed to prefer to stay at home. Here, however, 
was a wicked three-months-old widow, so it was de¬ 
cided to have her nurse bring Moothi along. 

There were plenty of servants. That helped. 
But here were shrines where one must crawl on 




THE LITTLEST TAG-END WIDOW 51 


one’s knees. There were the waters of the sacred 
Ganges where one must bathe. Moothi did not ap¬ 
prove of the trip. And Moothi’s nurse detested the 
trip. Especially when Moothi began to teethe, did 
everything go horribly. It was hot weather—for 
India, which means it was perfectly blazing. There 
was so much dust, and so many flies,—and poor 
Moothi, who now had nine teeth and was trying 
her best to get a tenth, wailed and wailed and 
wailed. She wailed all day and she wailed all 
night, and Moothi’s nurse couldn’t get any sleep, 
and the sixteen grown-up widows couldn’t get any 
night, and Moothi’s nurse couldn’t get any sleep. 
Everybody was getting thin and nervous. Every¬ 
body scolded. Everybody was so unhappy. And 
then- 

Well, this is how it happened. They were a long 
procession, seventeen widows and their servants. 
Moothi, being the tag-end widow, came last in line 
with her nurse. They were headed for a very 
sacred shrine, and Moothi had stopped crying for 
a while and fallen into a troubled sleep. They 
were passing through a poor little village, where 
children played in the street and heaped dust to¬ 
gether and pulled it apart again. 

Moothi’s nurse lagged further and further behind 
the procession. Nobody turned to look after her. 
Then she took off all Moothi’s clothes. She rubbed 
a little dirt into Moothi’s hair and face, and laid 
Moothi-baby down in the sun! 



52 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


Moothi woke up, but ber nurse and everybody 
else were gone! She howled a little, and kicked her 
legs a little, and then lay still awhile blinking 
about her. By-and-by the sixteen widows and the 
servants came back, searching for her and her 
nurse. But Moothi was very dirty now and did not 
cry. So they passed by and missed her, and Moothi 
was left alone in the strange little village. 

I really think that was nice, considering. Moothi 
did not know she was a widow, and there was no 
inconvenient person around to tell on her! 
Moothi was a baby again! Of course she was only 
a girl, and girls are not much consequence in India. 
But even so, when Moothi began to mourn over her 
tenth tooth again, one of the village women came 
and picked her up and took her home and tended 
her. So the Littlest Tag-End Widow now had a 
mother! Oh, perhaps not a pretty mother like 
yours. Perhaps a mother who never had marcelled 
her hair even, or brushed her teeth! But at least 
mother enough to find a little room in her heart for 
baby Moothi,—without which, I am very sure the 
world would have resolved itself into a decimal 
point, and Moothi into a zero, and her life into a 
wee minus sign! 


< 


THE NEAE EAST 


VI 


Ayesha Solves Her A, B, 0 


A lthough Ayesha Manogian had not 
been horn in the bottom of a perfume 
bottle, she was recognized as a person 
who had no soul. Her intimates, in their Syrian 
tongue, called her a Terror, and the awfulness of 
her was preached even to Ain Tyleas. However, 
she was grown-up now, at least for Syria, where 
girls sometimes marry at eight, are i3asse at eigh¬ 
teen and almost grandmothers at twenty-eight; and 
having passed the ripe age of eleven, Ayesha al¬ 
ready had been married three years, widowed three 
months, and fallen heir to three step-sons! 

Three seemed Ayesha’s sinister number. As to 
her step-sons, each of them bore a long and tire¬ 
some name such as Mohammed might have worn 
with dignity and delight. But since they figured 
in Ayesha’s life like three unknown quantities 
which it seemed must be solved, let them he known 
as A, B and C. They can then he stated somewhat 
in the manner of an example in Third Grade arith¬ 
metic. 


53 


54 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


If A has two little uglinesses, an ugly face and 
an ugly tongue; and if B has three good-sized sins, 
lying, stealing and swearing; if C has four very 
had habits, running away, tattling, breaking things 
and refusing to say his prayers. How much peace 
has Ayesha? 

A, B and C were four, six and eight years old, 
hut as far as attempting to love, honour and obey 
Ayesha Manogian, they might have been forty-four, 
sixty-six, and eighty-eight! They paid no atten¬ 
tion to anything she told them, or rather they paid 
so startling and accurate an attention, that they im¬ 
mediately went and did just the reverse of what she 
commanded. If they had been sired by Nero, they 
could not have acted much worse. 

Ayesha’s corrective methods were prompt, if not 
conservative. When A told her she was the equiva¬ 
lent of the Cat’s Whiskers,” when she told him to 
lug home firewood, she hit his hand until it hied. 
When B sold the family goat to a leper by mistake, 
not being able to take money from a leper, which B 
noticed too late, Ayesha spared neither the rod nor 
B’s anatomy. Solomon would have held his breath 
to see her demonstrate this proverb. But when C 
neglected to say his prayers,—and saying one’s 
prayers included first washing the face, hands, 
arms, feet and legs; learning which side of the face 
to wash first, and which side of the hand and foot; 
remembering whether the arm should be stroked 
from the wrist to the elbow or from the elbow to 


AYESHA SOLVES HER A, B, C 


55 


the wrist,—^well, when C neglected his prayers, 
Ayesha hit him in the cheek. 

C^s howl drew the neighbours. A stepmother! 
Whispers, then open words flew about, and the end 
of it was that A, B and C were suddenly taken 
'away from Ayesha and sent to the Ain Tyleas 
orphanage. 

Ayesha was glad, and she remained glad three 
days. Although she had not been born in the bot¬ 
tom of a perfume bottle, she knew she was a person 
without a soul. But after three days, probably 
after she was a little rested from the emotional 
strain of those three riotously bad boys, she began 
to remember C’s face when she bit him, and she 
wondered for an instant if boyish vengeances ever 
amounted to anything. 

She had little time to worry over this, however, 
for one of her brothers who had departed to 
America, U. S. A., or the bright, beautiful, scintil¬ 
lating Usa,’’ as Ayesha called it, had just written, 
urging her to follow him to the land of the free and 
the home of the immigrant. 

Ayesha’s face brightened into horrid brilliance as 
she thought of this wonderful adventure. She 
would go so far away from A, B and C that they 
could never And her—even if they never forgot— 
even if some day they tried to pay her back I 

She did her packing hurriedly, in a sort of 
strange fever, troubled by her own high-forced 
gaiety. But through it all she was troubled by a 


66 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


strange question. Should she go and bid A, B and 
C good-by, before she left Syria forever? She 
bated to! 

Shall I go ? or, Shall I not go ? ” she debated 
in that strange, anxious uneasiness which she began 
to view with alarm. At the orphanage, if they 
knew I was the one who bit C’s cheek, they would 
certainly cast me out without even seeing him! ” 
She licked her lips. 

However, she went. She arrived at the orphan¬ 
age just three hours before time for her train. 
Three hours! The boys, she was told, were bathing 
with the other children, down at the Mediterranean. 
Would she wait until they came back? 

No, Ayesha had no time to wait. She heaved a 
sigh of relief. She had really tried to say good- 
by,” but Fate had spared her. She hastened out 
of the door, down the road a little way. The wa¬ 
ters of the great blue sea lay underneath, and she 
quivered a moment, then turned uneasily and 
started away. Poor little eleven-year-old Ayesha, 
who hardly knew how to swim, who hardly knew 
childhood—she gave a childish sigh and turned 
again to the fragrance of the wide waters. Such 
beautiful, sparkling waters! How each ripple sang 
and danced! It was as if God was glad—as if God 
danced! And how the little boys and girls shouted 
and splashed—shouted and splashed—to see God 
dance! 

Only three hours, but perhaps she could catch a 


AYESHA SOLVES HER A, B, 0 


57, 


minute to go a little closer to those beautiful 
waters! Perhaps she should catch sight of A, B 
and C too, and wave them good-hy, without their 
knowing it was she. Then certainly they would 
wave back. She thought she could go undisturbed 
on her long journey, if only A, B and C waved to 
her, even if they did not know it was she! Per¬ 
haps, if they had, such joy as this each day, they 
already had forgotten her great unkindness. Some¬ 
how she began to feel that she never could really 
leave until they smiled at her! 

With that last strange notion she ran down 
toward the shore, looked closely into the faces of 
all the hoys and girls, asking over and over for 
four-year-old A, six-year-old B and eight-year-old 
O. Everybody seemed far too busy, too merry to 
answer her. She ran on. 

At last she saw them, yes, away out beyond all 
the other children, clinging to their safety ropes, 
three such tiny dots. At home they had looked so 
big! Bad little fellows, how close they had gone 
to the whirlpool! Were they not afraid of that hor¬ 
rid maelstrom ? Bad, foolish little fellows! She 
called to them in her high scolding voice she used 
at home, Come in shore—^bad little pigs— 
c—o——E at once! ’’ 

They did not hear her. 

iTo other children were near them. A, B and C 
seemed to be strangers! She raised her shrill 
voice, Pigs! b——d l— —t—t— l— 



58 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


p——G —s! ” she cried. They turned. They 
saw her. They considered her venomously from 
ihat distance, seemed to ask each other what she 
was there for. Whether she might have come to 
carry them home. 

C —o —M— E I —s—H—o— E —” she 
cried. 

With that they turned from her in their prompt 
and awful disobedience, waded deeper, beyond the 
safety ropes, beyond A's four-year-old depth, B's 
six-year-old depth, C's eight-year-old depth, poor 
little A, B and C, who did not know how to swim! 

Ayesha Manogian hardly knew how to swim her¬ 
self! But, oh, there was nobody else close by! 
She waded. She stumbled. She came up against 
a great rock. She got to the reach of the maelstrom, 
with its high scolding voice! Three little boys— 

three hours- She sucked in a terrible breath 

and struck out. The strange notion took her that 
she was somebody else, and the high, scolding- 
voiced-maelstrom was she—^was Ayesha Manogian, 
who had hidden her three step-sons behind her cruel 
apron of water! So she battled with this savage, 
stubborn, frightful self, somehow found herself 
more savage, more stubborn, more frightful than 
the maelstrom. 

One by one she found the three little boys, 
dragged them up, and laid them on the rock. Then 
with all that was left of her, she gave one supreme 



AYESHA SOLVES HEK A, B, G 59 

lift to herself, and crawled up the rock beside 
them. 

Dumbly she lay there, close to their breathing 
little bodies, and closed her eyes. Strange agonies 
ministered to her. Chills, like long shadows 
pressed against her, chills as of evening when great 
olive hills rose up and hid the sun, and reefs of 
thin gray cloud, like drifting smoke from a sacri¬ 
fice, grew denser—Sacrifice!—Alone before its 
glory she lay, a broken penitent, peering from de¬ 
feated, sightless eyes upon the radiance she could 
not see. j 

Slowly that brightness darkened into twilight.’ 
Little lights as of aimless fireflies, as of quaint 
glowworms, spun zigzag paths of colour for a mul¬ 
titude of strange shadowy wings. Then one glare 
of brilliance tore through those last shadows and 
all was night. 

When the life-boat reached the rock, poor little 
A, B and C were trying to wake up their eleven- 
year-old Ayesha. They did not know that at last 
she had solved the problem of A’s ugliness, B’s sins 
and C’s disobedience, and had given her life for 
that answer. 



THE NEAR EAST 


yii 

Uncle Ourig Plays Ghost 

I AH sure I have said Malaga raisins are 
very good raisins, hut the raisins of Smyrna 
are better,’’ about forty million times. And 
every time I said it I wished I was a little Smyrna 
girl, so that I could go out and pick a box of raisins 
right off the tree every time I wanted one! 

Of course I’m big enough now to know that 
raisins don’t grow in boxes, like I used to think 
they did, and I’ve often wondered why somebody 
hasn’t called Mr. Hoover’s attention (Mr. Bur¬ 
bank’s, I mean), to that unhandy fact. Wouldn’t 
they look cute, don’t you think, thirty little raisins 
shuffling around in a pretty pink Burbanked pod ? 

Well, anyway, this story isn’t about raisins, but 
about Zabel who was almost ten, and her wise old 
grandmother who was almost a hundred (at least 
she looked a hundred), and about Uncle Ourig, 
who was just about thirty. I don’t know whether 
he was uncle to Zabel, or uncle to her grandmother, 
because they both called him Uncle,” but anyway 

he was a nice young man, oh, a whiz of a chap! 

60 


UNCLE OURIG PLAYS GHOST 


61 


TLej all lived in Smyrna when they were at home. 
Uncle Ourig had business off in Algiers now and 
then, and Algiers, if you know your geography, is 
up in Africa, while Smyrna is down in Turkey. 
The funny part of it is that in Algiers you’d ex¬ 
pect to see Africans, and in Smyrna Turks, wouldn’t 
you? But it is just like a family that takes hoard¬ 
ers. Boarders live in your house, but they don’t 
belong to you, and as to belonging to Turkey, 
Smyrna would rather fly! It belonged to Greece, 
last time I dared look at a geography. 

Anyway Uncle Ourig went down to Algiers on 
business not very long ago, and being a musical 
person, he stuck his oboe into his bag. An oboe 
is sort of a flute that you blow on and tickle with 
your Angers, and Uncle Ourig could make the most 
stunning music on his oboe you ever wanted to 
hear. Most everybody in Smyrna said so. In fact 
Uncle Ourig never missed playing on his oboe at 
night, no matter where he was. If he was glad he 
played, and if he was sad he played, and you would 
want to dance all around him or sob tears all over 
him, according to the way he played. 

Well, the flrst night he was in Algiers an old 
Arab,—(I told you it wouldn’t he an African, 
didn’t I?),—an old Arab sat on a mat and began 
to play on an oboe. Only it was horn-shaped and 
was called a zourna. The old Arab was fat and 
full of funny floppy clothes, so that he really looked 
like a dressed-up pig doing a stunt in the circus. 



62 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Uncle Ourig did not notice, for lie was so busy 
listening. On and on and on tbe Arab wailed and 
flourished and trilled and intoned through his 
zourna. Uncle Ourig never had heard any music 
like that before, so finally he got out a pencil and 
jotted down the notes on a paper. When he got 
back to his ship (I think he slept on a ship), he 
played the music over and over on his oboe, just 
-as he had heard the Arab play it, until he remem¬ 
bered it. 

The next afternoon Uncle Ourig went again to 
the cafe, and there sat the same old Arab playing 
the same old tune. Uncle Ourig had brought his 
oboe along with him this time, and when the Arab 
stopped to rest. Uncle Ourig put his oboe together 
and began to play the Arab’s song for him! 

My goodness, how Uncle Ourig played! Little 
trills and wailing clusters of sound, like little clus¬ 
ters of grapes hanging to a long, long vine. The 
old Arab listened and listened, very shocked and 
very surprised, like a little boy who hears a strange 
djinn piping. Perhaps he thought Uncle Ourig 
was a sort of fairy or something, for just as soon 
as Uncle Ourig got through, the old Arab got up 
and carefully inspected him all over, and then told 
him what a wonderful thing he had done. It seems 
he had performed a miracle, Uncle Ourig had! 
Why, he had played a canticle of Islam which no 
man may learn without years of practicing, oh, ten 
hours a day for forty years or so! And certainly 


UNCLE OURIG PLAYS GHOST 


63 


no low-down, ignorant Armenian (he stuck his nose 
up at Uncle Ourig) could learn it anyhow—not if 
he practiced twenty hours a day for a trillion 
years! 

Of course Uncle Ourig thought that was a pretty 
rich joke, and when he got home he told it to 
Zabel and her grandmother, and how they laughed, 
when he played that Arab song to them. Then he 
forgot all about it. He had plenty else on hand, I 
should think, for the Greeks and the Turks began 
to fight, and the Greeks bombarded the city of 
Smyrna, and there you are ! Or there Zabel and 
grandmother and Uncle Ourig were. A pretty 
tough spot with all the houses on fire, and nothing 
to eat, and the guns, the terrible guns, killing 
everybody. And then, when nobody alive had any 
home to go to, it began to rain! All Zabel’s grand¬ 
mother had saved was a little basket of lunch {don't 
grandmothers know?), and all Zabel had saved 
was her pet kitten, and all Uncle Ourig had saved 
was his oboe. 

They rushed out of the city, so terrible behind 
them, like a roaring furnace, like a roaring giant, 
a red Allah that called in great hoarse gusts of 
laughter to the Prophet. And the rain beat down 
upon them like a whip, whipping them into the 
dust of the road. Zabefis legs began to ache until 
she thought she could not take another step, and her 
kitten cried, and grandmother’s face grew gray and 
grayer, but still they went on. Uncle Ourig put 


64 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


an arm around each of them, and again and again 
he said, We shall come to a village soon. There 
you may rest.’’ 

Pretty soon they did come near a village. It was 
getting dark and the rain had stopped, but in the 
awful smacking blows of the cannon behind them, 
sounds which seemed to leave great holes in the air, 
they did not notice the strange new sound in front 
of them. Uncle Ourig heard it first, for he had 
been urging them forward, and now he pulled them 
up so short that they nearly fell fiat. Zabel’s 
grandmother put out one hand as if to push away 
the cruel new noise, clasped the other tightly around 
Zahel and her kitty, then toppled over soundlessly 
and lay still. 

Uncle Ourig bent over grandmother, so quiet in 
all that noise, her face, now that her eyes were 
closed, so sad—so strange and sad. Zahel never 
had noticed before how sad a face her grandmother 
had. Grandmother smiled so much—when she was 
awake! 

Uncle Ourig began to tear handfuls of grass and 
weeds to cover grandmother from sight, and Zahel 
helped him. Then Uncle Ourig hid Zahel and her 
kitty in beside grandmother and went a little way 
off to find water. Zabel suddenly felt so alone, so 
far from any help, there so close beside grand¬ 
mother, there so deep in the noise. And then Zabel 
heard the new noise! It was close, oh, so close! 


UNCLE OURIG PLAYS GHOST 


65 


A frightful shriek, and another sound, and she 
hnew! It was the Turkish soldiers! 

Now I suppose IVe got to explain to you how a 
Turkish soldier is different from our own dear 
Sammies. Suppose you had a lollypop in one 
hand and a Christian in the other hand, and you 
told a Turkish soldier to take his choice, have the 
lollypop or kill the Christian—why, even if it was 
a big red five-cent lollypop and a knock-kneed, 
pigeon-toed Christian, he’d choose the Christian. 
It wouldn’t have to be a go-to-church and prayer- 
meeting Christian either. This Christian might 
swear and tear and bite and everything, but just so 
long as he wasn’t a Turk, he must be a Christian! 
And the more Christians a Turk kills, the higher 
to heaven he goes, to hear him tell it! So you can 
see why grandmother fainted when she heard the 
noise of the Turkish soldiers, and why Uncle Ourig 
covered her and Zabel with grass, and what Zabel 
had to expect if the soldiers found her! 

Zabel squeezed her strange eyes shut, and said a 
pitiful little prayer, Oh, Father-Jesus, save us!” 
but all the while she was listening to the horrible 
noise. Why didnt Uncle Ourig come back? Had 
they caught him? Oh, somebody close— Oh! 

Zabel gave a wild shriek and shut her eyes 
tighter. Somebody had her by the shoulder, shook 
her roughly. She looked—Uncle Ourig! Sh— 
H! ” he hissed so savagely that Zabel stared. In 
fact, he had bent down so suddenly that all the pre- 



66 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


<jioiis water he had brought for grandmother 
spilled away. 

Now that Zahel really looked at him, Uncle 
Ourig looked as frightened as she felt. It is had 
enough to he frightened yourself. But when the 
only person you own, who is safe and strong, gets 
frightened too, how do you feel ? 

TJncle Ourig! ” Zahel cried out loud in alarm, 
not knowing what she did, for Uncle Ourig had 
pulled out his oboe! 

Was he crazy? Perfectly raving crazy, with 
Turkish soldiers killing Christians not twenty feet 
away, and just craving and looking'for more, and 
Uncle Ourig to think of putting his oboe together. 

Uncle Ourig!'' Zahel gasped, and at that he 
shook her good and hard and sa’id Sh—H! ” as 
though he would like to choke her, and put his oboe 
together some more! Why if he played one note the 
soldiers would hear him. They would come and 
butcher him and grandmother and Zahel just like 
nothing, and much obliged to him for the chance! 

Uncle Ourig! " Zahel stuffed her fingers into 
her ears, and her kitty, who had been clutched a 
good deal and cried over a good deal, took one 
jump, and ran away! Grandmother stirred. And 
Uncle Ourig started to play! 

Oh, I cannot explain to you the way Uncle Ourig 
played, but it was as if a wild fairy had taken hold 
of him, as if he were a djinn on fire, the music 
curling around him like wisps of smoke. He blew 


UNCLE OURIG PLAYS GHOST 


67 


so hard that his fingers looked as if they were con¬ 
tinually blown out of the stops! It was as if he 
blew a vine of sound from earth to heaven, a 
strange, thin high tone, hung with clusters of 
sound. Behind him the city roared and blas¬ 
phemed, hut suddenly at that strange Ismalic song, 
the noises in front of him stopped as if by a com¬ 
mand. 

What made the Turkisli soldiers stop and 
run away? Did they think ghosts played, those 
wicked, terrible ’fraid-cats, when they heard the 
Arab canticle ?—^for they ran away! 

The village silence continued. No more fright¬ 
ful shrieks came from the little houses. 

How they got grandmother to her feet and 
brushed off and walking I don’t know, but it is cer¬ 
tain that the three of them stumbled forward again 
in the dark. Uncle Ourig never daring to stop his 
strange Arab tune a second. So they reached the 
village, the only little village left standing of all 
around; and trembling women tended grandmother 
and Zabel and Uncle Ourig, gave them supper 
and bed and home. But Zabel’s kitten never came 
back. 


THE NEAE EAST 


yiii 

The Utterlies 


H EEVIE was little, but ob, my! He 
had pep. He had steam. He had red 
blood and ambition. And he was ten. 
He was ten-and-a-half to be exact, and to be per¬ 
fectly exact, he also had imagination. 

Hervie, of course, hadnh an idea that it was 
imagination, when it roared its first tiny cub roar 
and lashed its diminutive tail. But he was de¬ 
lighted with it, and helped it roar and lash, until 
presently it was a big, overgrown imagination, with 
sharp, hungry teeth. And so when it ate him up 
and swallowed him whole, Hervie liked it. 

But Hervie’s family did not like it. Ho sir-ee! 
What’s the m^itter with that kid, for pity’s 
sake?” Hervie’s father asked on a certain cele-- 
brated evening in that family. And what’s more, 
where is he ? ” 

Hervie’s mother, who had been trying to find 
her best society gold-monogrammed stationery to 
write a note on, said she didn’t know just that in¬ 
stant. Hervie had been there to dinner, and hadn’t 

68 



THE UTTEKLIES 


69 


asked to go out or anything, so he must be around 
the house. But where on earth was her box of sta¬ 
tionery ? 

Huh! ’’ said Hervie’s father. Where’s my 
razor, and where’s my suit ? ” Hervie’s father be¬ 
longed to the Order of the Knights of the Orient,” 
a secret organization which wore red fezzes and 
’bolero jackets and things, on initiation nights. 
This was initiation night, and Hervie’s father was 
Lone High Master of the Order, so it was impera¬ 
tive that he find his razor and his red fez and 
bolero jacket. 

Of course Hervie might have taken the razor,” 
said Hervie’s father, sloshing about in the bath¬ 
room, and he might have taken the suit, and he 
might have taken your stationery, but he naturally 
wouldn’t take them all at one time, would he ? ” 

In answer, there was a frightful bump from the 
maid’s room up on the third fioor. As the maid 
was washing the dinner dishes downstairs, Hervie- 
Sire rushed up towards that sound, his suspenders 
draped about his hips, and found Hervie sitting 
dazedly in the maid’s waste basket rubbing his 
head. 

The gold-monogrammed stationery, the razor, a 
fountain pen (which had not been missed) and 
some burnt cork, were scattered over the top of the 
maid’s chiffonier. The mirror to the chiffonier 
hung at a curious angle, having been jarred com¬ 
pletely loose on one side. How that Hervie’s 


70 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


father really took a straight look at the hoy, he 
saw that Hervie's eyebrows had been curiously 
darkened and widened, and now met in a sinister 
sort of love-knot over his nose. His father's red 
fez lay on the floor, and the Lone High Master's 
bolero still clung to Hervie’s shoulders. 

Hervie had not waited to be questioned, but im¬ 
mediately explained that he had jacked himself up, 
upon the maid's chiffonier, in order to think. That 
suddenly a great thought had burst upon him, 
which so overpowered his sense of gravity that he 
skidded off his perch and landed in the waste 
basket. 

This explanation, however, did not satisfy Her- 
vie’s Sire. Why should Hervie have to sit on top 
of the maid's chiffonier to think? And how about 
the wrecked mirror? 

Hervie at this explained that he had been getting 
a close up " of Kemal Pasha slicing Armenians, 
and taking it down in shorthand. He thought it 
ought to make a great scenario for the Famous 
Players-Lasky. 

Hervie’s father was not able to understand these 
technical terms, and Hervie had to resort to nur¬ 
sery words. 

I was jest pretending I was Kemal Pasha,’^ 
said Hervie. The one Uncle Zal writes about. I 
made me some nice Turkish eyebrows, and bor¬ 
rowed your suit.’’ 

Yes,” said his father. 


THE UTTERLIES 


71 


And I worked mj moving-picture camera 
and-’’ 

Your moving-picture camera ? ’’ asked his 
father. 

Sure/’ said Hervie. I pretended the looking- 
glass is the camera. You twirl it fast enough and 
things spin ’round, you het! It’s great, only none 
of the other bureau looking-glasses will do it. They 
stick. So I cranked my camera, and took four 
reels of Kemal murdering Armenians. Honest, I 
got so I could do it fine. Then I thought I’d take 
a close-up of Kemal for the fifth reel, like you have 
to, so I climbed on top of the chiffonier, and darned 
if the looking-glass didn’t fly off one of its pins! 
It takes up a lot of room spinning around, and I 
have to sit on the edge anyway, hut it kind of sur¬ 
prised me when it broke, and I fell off. Can’t you 
get me a real movie camera, Had ? They don’t 
cost much! ” 

I’d he likely to,” said Hervie’s impossible 
father, who now hurriedly gathered his fez, bolero 
and razor, and made for downstairs. 

Why not ? ” Hervie inquired, indignantly, 
trailing after him. His father merely grunted. 

Then I’ll ask Uncle Zal,” said Hervie. He’s 
right on the spot. I bet he’ll send me one of the 
Pasha’s old suits, even, and maybe a dead Ar¬ 
menian ! ” Then he brightened. Here was a beau¬ 
tiful idea. Uncle Zal had been appointed one of a 
commission to report on the Armenian situation. 



72 STOKIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


He had talked with Kemal Pasha. He had walked 
and ridden the Armenian roads. Moreover, Uncle 
Zal was one of those delightful beings who had lots 
of sympathy and asked no inconvenient questions. 
It is to he presumed that Uncle Zaks imagination, 
if he had one, had been slammed into an iron cage 
and kept padlocked. But sometimes it peeked 
through the bars, as for instance when you told 
him you needed a moving-picture camera in your 
tenth year, Hervie was sure of the camera, and 
the other stage properties thrown in if he but wrote 
and asked for them. 

You see. Uncle Zal,’^ he ended his letter, it 
would be utterly impossible to convince Pop that 
I need one. But it’s been a utter failure so far, 
trying to make money without one. You can see 
for yourself how utterly necessary it is to have tools 
to do good work, can’t you. Uncle Zal ? So now no 
more until I hear from you, only you know your¬ 
self there’s millions in Moving Pictures, don’t you ? 
I mean millions of dollars, or hundreds anyway. 

Yours loving nephew, 

Hervie.” 

Hervie had a hazy idea that Uncle Zal did not 
love the Turks any too madly. The comment 
Uncle Zal had made on the Turkish situation was 
written in these mild well-modulated words, Tur¬ 
key has acted rather as a kind of blight upon all 
the peoples she has conquered. As Ramsey—pos- 


THE UTTERLIES 


73 


sibly too strongly—^pnts it, ^ The action of the 
Turks in every department of life has simply been 
to ruin, never to rebuild.’ ” 

Hervie was, then, utterly unprepared (I use the 
adverb advisedly) when Uncle Zal sailed into him 
with the following letter: 

‘^Dear Herv (it began). 

You seem to have invented and patented that 
word ‘ utterly ’ and nailed it down. Why, my dear 
child, there isn’t one soul in America who knows 
what the word ^ utterly ’ means, l^ot unless they’ve 
been to Europe sometime in the past eight years and 
seen some of the deluge. I wish the moon were a 
piece of paper and I could write some of the ^ utter ’ 
things upon it, for the world to read. 

I read in a short story some time ago that the 
heroine was ^ utterly sad.’ I said then, ‘ Oh, pish! 
Utter sadness would kill her! ’ Now that I’ve seen 
utter sadness, I know it kills the precious some¬ 
thing we call life, without killing the body. 

There were five thousand women pushed out of 
their home town late last fall, when the Kemal 
Pasha began his house-cleaning. When they got to 
the town where they were sent, there were five hun¬ 
dred left. Puzzle: Where were the other forty- 
five hundred? 

Well, we came over the same road a short time 
later. We saw nothing but a dreary road. That 
was all the Pasha wanted us to see. Afterwards 
we saw the five hundred women. They were very 


74 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 

strangely blank of face. Thin, of course, and with 
no shine to their eyes. We asked them where the 
rest of the women were ? ^ On the road behind! 

You will find them on the road behind! ’ they re¬ 
peated over and over. The shine had gone out of 
their voices, too. Do you understand what had 
happened ? 

Now suppose you had seen your father and 
mother killed like one little boy who lay in the hos¬ 
pital. He had not smiled in months. Every day 
we tried to joke with him, to make him smile. His 
eyes were blank with that same blankness, and his 
voice was blank with that same blankness. He an¬ 
swered your questions as if he was very tired and 
wished you would go away and not ask him any 
more. Now, Hervie, there is nothing so unnatural 
as a child who does not smile. Utter sadness was 
the disease. It killed him. 

There was a baby, too, we picked up. Its 
hands and feet had been frozen, and had fallen off. 
Utter neglect. Then there was a boy of fifteen who 
had lost his parents when he was seven, and had 
wandered ever since. He was bent and old like a 
man of sixty. He looked as nearly fifteen as 
Methuselah! In fact I would not believe he was 
a boy at all until four weeks before he died. He 
said he wanted an orange. I gave him one. Shall 
I tell you what he said ? ^ I called you the Mister 
who loves me, when you took me in,' he whispered, 
^ but now do you mind if I call you Father ? ” ’ 


THE UTTERLIES 


75 


He smiled, and tlien I knew he was fifteen. That 
hoy was utterly starved, mind, heart and body. 

I could tell you about the little Armenian 
grandmothers who had seen their sons and daugh¬ 
ters tortured and swept away in the Pasha’s terri¬ 
ble house-cleaning. And they still held on, and to 
this day keep their tiny grandchildren about them 
and go on! Utterly brave! 

America feeds most of these orphans. Do you 
know what they get for their supper? A cup of 
weak tea, with six raisins in it, and three and a 
half ounces of bread. Cut a slice of your mother’s 
bread and see how much it weighs, Hervie. These 
orphans once got four and a half ounces of bread, 
but America, good old America, is so sick and tired 
of feeding orphans, orphans are such old stuff, that 
the bread had to be cut down. And there’s just this 
to be said about food. It is just as hard on the 
digestion to eat too little as to eat too much. 
Meals are old stuff, too. But America eats hers 
every day. 

How, my dear Youngster, I am coming to the 
real pith of my letter. Perhaps you understand 
why I have stayed on in the Hear East. Perhaps 
you don’t. But I want you to ask your father to 
sell those Acme Shear stocks of mine and send me 
the money as soon as possible. I am as ever. 

Your loving 

Uncle Zal.” 

Gosh/’ said Hervie, and because the thing was 


76 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


too big for bim, could saj no more. But be shiv¬ 
ered as be banded tbe letter to bis father. And he 
thought, I’m glad be didn’t insult me by thinking 
I’d want a camera, after all that I '''' 

Hervie’s father went five miles up into the air, 
when he came to the part about selling the Acme 
Shear stocks. They’re all the stocks Zal’s got! ” 
he roared. He’s crazy! ” 

He’s a—a utter sport! ” said Hervie. That 
night when he looked out and saw the moon, white 
and round, it looked more than ever like a piece of 
paper, and he wondered how the word utterly 
would look scrawled across it, for all the world to 
see. 

The next day he got a newspaper route and came 
home to dinner very tired and draggled from 
selling papers. He stuck it out through winter 
sleet and snow, and the pennies stacked up. 

Going to get that moving-picture camera any¬ 
way, hey, kid ? ” his father asked Hervie one night 
with pardonable pride, and handed him a bill. 

Hervie took it slowly. Have I got to use this 
for a camera ? ” he asked. Why, no,” said his 
father, puzzled. What you saving for ? ” 

Hervie hated to tell. He knew his father would 
go ten miles into the air this time. For the Ut- 
terlies,” he said, and watched his father’s face. It 
took some time to explain that he meant Uncle 
Zal’s Armenians, the starved, sad, utterly Ar¬ 
menians. 


SPAIN 


IX 

Zara and the Horrible Mantilla 

Z AKA wanted a mantilla just like big girls 
wear—a beautiful long black lace man¬ 
tilla that would cover her pretty little 
Spanish head, and fall down around her arms— 
so! Oh, she wanted it, and wanted it, more than 
anything else in the world. 

She had prayed for it before her favourite saint, 
and burned candles there, and last January, when 
the Three Kings passed by (those second cousins to 
Santa Claus), she had placed her little shoes on 
the balcony, hoping they would be full of a lace 
mantilla the next morning. But last January— 
wasn’t it odd ?—the Three Kings had not stopped 
to give her anything! 

When Zara ran out in the morning her shoes had 
disappeared! Oh, where could they, could they 
be? Zara had hunted everywhere, now with great 
tears in her eyes, now with flushed cheeks, now 
shaking her head, her black eyes full of storm and 
anger. At last in her distress she ran to her 
brother, Pedro. 


77 



78 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


Oil, Dios! Maria! Maria! They are gone! ’’ 
slie sobbed, and flung herself into Pedro’s long, 
grown-up arms. Pedro happened to be Zara’s 
father and mother and big brother all in one, and 
Zara was Pedro’s complete family. 

Pedro’s face looked very queer while she was 
telling him. His pale thin cheeks turned white as 
plaster. Honestly, while she cried, Pedro got to 
looking just like you feel when somebody gives you 
a dose of castor oil. But the minute Zara looked 
up at him again his face changed, he frowned a 
little and his eyes stared inside at himself,—^you 
know, the way you look when you are doing mental 
arithmetic. 

Then he said, Ah, Pedro is the bad old thing! 
Pedro forgot the Three Kings’ coming! Pedro 
found somebody’s little shoes thrown out on the 
balcony, and he thought he would bring them in 
and try them on and see if they would fit him! ” 

Zara laughed, then she cried harder. When 
Zara wanted anything, she forgot everything else in 
the world, and pretty often she talked and talked 
and cried about it, until Pedro got nightmares and 
fidgets and everything. It was that way this time, 
for pretty soon Zara talked and whined about the 
mantilla, until Pedro felt as if he ate black lace, 
and smelt black lace from morning to night. 

That was in January when Pedro was thin in 
his cheeks and limpy in his leg. But Zara kept at 
him until he promised her that on St. John’s day. 


ZARA AND THE HORRIBLE MANTILLA 79 


in July, when there is another holiday and giving 
of more presents, she should have her black lace 
mantilla. 

Zara shivered with delight when he promised her. 
But now, she asked him, now that he was so lame 
and weak, could he buy it for her? Was he sure 
he wasn’t teasing? 

It was from that day that Pedro, with the face 
like old plaster and the queer twisted leg, got up 
mornings to do his Daily Dozen. Of course he did 
not have a phonograph and exercises like you have, 
but he put on his gay and beautiful toreador’s 
suit and hobbled around his little room, just as if 
he were in a tiny arena fighting bulls! But oh, 
goodness, right at first any bull that hadn’t had 
spring-halt and blind staggers could have caught 
Pedro, because Pedro’s leg would begin to twist 
under him, and he would have to stop for that day; 
yes, and groan a little. 

Zara loved Pedro in his toreador’s suit. She 
told him so. It made her think of last year when 
he was a real toreador, and flew at bulls like a but¬ 
terfly, and waved his teasingly gorgeous cloak in 
their eyes, over their heads and noses. And then, 
like a butterfly, danced away from them and flitted 
back again, and with his long w'hite sword killed 
them! His sword with the cross in the hilt! But 
the last big, bad bull had not died on time, as he 
ought to! He was a sort of an old slow-poke, any¬ 
way, that bull. He didn’t want to fight the horses 


80 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


all stood up in a row before him, although the 
thousands and thousands of people all stood up 
and hissed and raged at him, screaming, Vacca! 
vacca! fuego! fuego! fuego!^' Although the ban- 
derillero men stuck winged darts into him! Darts 
that burst like firecrackers! Although the chula 
men flapped long maddening-coloured clothes under 
his nose! Nothing would he do, that bull, until 
Pedro, in his green and gold cloak, began to tease 
him. Then how he foamed in rage! How he low¬ 
ered his head to dash Pedro to pieces! How he 
staggered under Pedro’s lightning sword, and sud¬ 
denly pitched forward at Pedro. And Pedro, his 
cloak somehow caught upon the cruel horns, sud¬ 
denly staggered and fell with him—fell and twisted 
his leg! Ah, that old bull! Ah, Pedro! 

This year, however, everything was going to be 
all right. Pedro’s leg would be all untwisted by 
St. John’s day. He would fight a new bull. He 
Vould get lots of 'pesetas, reales, duros, oh, lots of 
money. And then he would buy Zara her mantilla. 
Zara could think of nothing except her mantilla, all 
day and every day. When once she put it over her 
head —oh how different she would feel! How much 
better she could say her prayers then! Why! it 
would be like saying one’s prayers in a lace cathe¬ 
dral! And so it was until St. John’s day. 

Zara was up with the sunlight that wonderful 
morning, for was not this the great day of the bull¬ 
fight, the day of the giving of gifts, the day Zara 


ZARA AND THE HORRIBLE MANTILLA 81 


was to receive her mantilla ? She ran into Pedro’s 
room to remind him of his promise, to tell him to 
he quite careful, for Pedro still limped a little. 
Pedro’s bed was there, a thin little pallet that some¬ 
how looked to Zara strangely hot and rumpled and 
tossed. Pedro’s room was there, a dark little cubby¬ 
hole in the wall, all stirred up and nervous looking, 
with Pedro’s horrid old clothes all strewn about 
like limp Pedros, lying indolently here and there. 
Half a Pedro where his old waist lay, half another 
Pedro where his old breeches lay. Zara stared and 
stared. 

Where has he gone ? Where ? ” she cried. 

He would not go to the bull-fight this way ? 
Walk oif, and not leave Zara a ticket? Not let 
Zara see the bull-fight ? ” Perhaps he was hiding 
in the corner, where he kept his beautiful toreador’s 
suit, just to tease Zara! The corner was empty! 
No Pedro! No Pedro! 

How often Pedro had put on his toreador’s suit 
and danced and shouted and sung about this tiny 
room! How often he had dodged imaginary bulls, 
teased them, advanced upon them, rushed aside, 
and then so splendidly thrown them! For an in¬ 
stant the room seemed full of Pedro and his bulls. 
A moment after Zara had run out of the room, out 
of the house, down the street, on and on. Cara 
amor! she must find Pedro! 

Thousands and thousands of people were all 
kbont. Ticket sellers were crying, “ Al sol! A la 


82 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


sonihra!^^ Bright red umbrellas were everywhere, 
bright faces, laughter, bottles of wine, peaches, 
dust, wilder laughter. Already the ring was sur¬ 
rounded by boys crazy to get in, hanging to the 
chance that maybe by-and-by, late in the afternoon, 
somebody would get sick and come away, and give 
them a ticket. 

Pedro! Pedro! ’’ Zara cried, rushing toward a 
toreador's suit — Not Pedro! — Another! — Not 
Pedro! She could not see him, she could not find 
him anywhere about the great arena. At last a 
green and gold cloak—Pedro! She rushed into his 
arms I A toreador picked her up. It is Pedro, 
then, you want ?" he asked. His face took on a 
tetrange look. He carried her in through the vomi- 
torium, into the great moon-dish-like arena, up 
steps, up and up and up. Then she was sitting 
alone, and the toreador had whispered in her ear. 
Make a little prayer for Pedro 1" and was 
gone. 

Suddenly the great amphitheatre was all alive, 
everybody pushing, scrambling, climbing. Soldier 
suits, great umbrellas and twinkling fans bobbed 
up and down; gold and silver combs, velvet coats, 
jewels and ivory walking sticks seemed to climb of 
themselves! Squeezing past Zara, sitting beside 
her, Dons and Donas came; eating, drinking, laugh¬ 
ing, talking, pockets full of bread and peaches, 
arms full of lemonade and tortillas and sandwiches! 



ZARA AND THE HORRIBLE MANTILLA 83 


Poor Zara was so hungry, yet somehow she knew 
she could not eat! 

On one side of Zara a funny old peasant with 
hemp sandals sat and talked to himself, his eyes 
glued to the arena. On her other side were two Se- 
noritas, full of a perfume and laughter which later 
changed to ferocious cries if a hull lagged a second 
longer than they thought he ought, or anything 
amiss happened on the arena. 

It was now four o’clock. Zara had been sitting 
there all day. But now the great trumpets blew, 
.and out marched twenty men dressed like Solomon 
and the Queen of Sheba and the Midnight Pollies! 
These twenty beautiful beings of feather hats and 
capes and scarfs, stopped before the mayor and 
asked permission in pantomime to begin the fight. 
Then out sprang the man with the key to the door 
where the bulls were kept. He pranced up on a 
gray horse, and was all dressed in black, and every¬ 
body cheered until he stopped to bow, when every¬ 
body hissed and stormed at him to hurry! He 
pranced away as fast as he could, and then the 
picadores, armed with long spikes, and riding the 
most wretched, terrible horses, trotted in, placed 
their steeds four in a row, and waited. Zara all 
this time was waiting for Pedro to come. She held 
her head high and proudly, waiting for Pedro. 
Then as she stared at the picador men, she started. 
Tears of anger sprang to her eyes. She looked 
harder. Yes! There sat Pedro, astride a horrible 


84 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


old horse—Pedro—^his face like white wax, his 
cheeks so thin, her Pedro! 

A terrible sob came into her throat. She under¬ 
stood now. Knew why he had not left her her eight 
reales to buy a seat with, why he had not wanted 
her to see the bull-fight. Pedro was not a toreador 
any more! 

She did not want to stay. But she was wedged 
in so tightly that she could not move, hardly 
breathe. The bulls leapt in, rushed at the twenty 
poor, defenceless, rickety old horses, horses who 
wore a bandage over one eye, and looked too funny 
for words. Zara held her breath. One horse down ! 
A great tan-coloured hull flew at Pedro's horse, 
hurled him, Pedro and all, to the earth. People 
ate and drank, laughed in scorn at Zara’s crying, 
dug their elbows into her ribs to make her hush, ate 
and drank, ate and drank. 

Darkness spouted up before Zara’s eyes. She 
could not see! Only that spouting darkness and 
somewhere beyond, Pedro, who had fallen. And 
there Zara had to sit for four hours more, with 
Pedro gone from the ring—Pedro, who had fallen! 
He was killed, she knew without telling. He could 
not save his fall with his poor twisted leg. Oh, it 
was Zara who had wanted him to fight—Zara who 
had thought he could fight bulls bigger than ele¬ 
phants with his poor twisted leg. And he had 
died, to buy her a mantilla! 

God go with you, Pedro! God go with you, 




ZARA AND THE HORRIBLE MANTILLA 85 


Pedro! she sobbed, over and over, and somebow 
found that at last sbe bad unloosened berself from 
tbe frightful arena, and was running away from it. 
It lay small and round behind her, far behind her, 
as she fled, like a brooch that she had unpinned and 
thrown away. The streets uncoiled themselves 
from her, and left her standing alone in a room, a 
dark little room, where stood Pedro’s thin little 
bed. There was a bundle on the bed, a long, nar¬ 
row bundle, done up to look like Pedro! But Zara 
knew it was not Pedro, not the Pedro who could 
smile at Zara, and tell her he had tried on her little 
shoes to see if they would fit! 

She ran and got a candle. She lighted that 
candle. She held it shakily in those thin, kind 
fingers of Pedro’s. The flicker of the candle 
seemed to change the look of Pedro’s face. His 
eyelids seemed to quiver in that flickering light. 
He seemed just about to open his eyes and smile 
at her and be Pedro again. 

For a long breathless second Zara watched him. 
Then she threw herself upon him. 

Pedro! ” she cried. Look at me, Pedro ! It 
is Zara, your horrible little Zara! Forgive me, 
Pedro! I want you, Pedro! I only wanted you! 
I did not want a—^lace—^mantilla ! ” 

At that word mantilla,” which had been dinned 
into Pedro’s ears for five months, the door behind 
opened and a woman came in. But Zara did not 
notice her, for at the same moment Pedro’s eyes 



86 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


opened a little slit, li© seemed to know that Zara 
was near him. He smiled. Then his hand began 
to work up to his breast. 

Sweet son, do thj ribs hurt thee ? ’’ ;murmured 
the woman, trying to place Pedro's hand at his side 
again, and pushing Zara away. 

Zara, like a little panther, bounded back to 
Pedro, and glared at the woman. Then she looked 
down at Pedro, and at what she saw she stopped. 
She turned pale. She trembled. She put her hands 
over her eyes. 

The woman saw. A mantilla! ” she cried, 
and ran her hands over it enviously. 

But Zara, holding her eyes fast shut with her 
little fingers, dashed to Pedro's side. I did not 
want a mantilla! I did not want a mantilla! I 
bate that mantilla! " she cried. Then she kissed 
Pedro furiously. I only want you, Pedro! " she 
sobbed. 

And Pedro opened his eyes a little speck wider, 
his look a whole warm embrace, his smile one of 
those beautiful smiles which dear mothers, dear 
fathers, sometimes give their children, and Zara 
suddenly knew that Pedro had forgiven her the 
price of the horrible mantilla. 


SPAIN 


X 

The Boy Whose Christian Name Was 

Billy-Tears 


W HEN that eminent yonng surgeon, Dr. 

W. McDermott Watt, was still a pen¬ 
niless medical student, he suddenly al¬ 
most lost his eyesight. He had been studying too 
hard, and spending too many hours in the dissect¬ 
ing room, and he had reached that point in his 
education when he was unable to meet any of his 
friends, or any stranger, in fact, without mentally 
sawing that person’s bones or cross-cutting into his 
tissues. And truly, any surgeon will tell you, if 
he is frank, that into his study of anatomy there 
came a time when he was incapable of talking with 
anybody without wondering how that person would 
cut up! 

So when Dr. Watt, or Bill, as everybody knew 
him, nearly lost his sight, he had just reached 
this ghastly stage of his career. The oculists told 
him it was imperative that he rest his eye muscles, 
and also his brain muscles, and prescribed new sur¬ 
roundings and a warm climate. 

87 


88 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


Rest makes me coo-coo! ” said Bill, hotly. 

His fellow students attempted to raise money to 
help Bill take a rest, but Bill wouldn’t accept it. 

What you going to do. Bill ? ” they asked him 
in concern. 

Go to Spain! ” said Bill, just to say something. 

I have castles in Spain! ” he added,-.airily, mak¬ 
ing what he considered a poetic how. 

Well, now,’’ said Bill’s chum. ^^They say 
Noah’s nephew went to Spain when he got out of 
the ark, and built the town of Saragossa. You 
goin’ over and build a town, Billy ? ” 

Gosh,” said the richest man in the class, who 
was also the wittiest, and the most traveled, Old 
Noah’s nephew must have lost his money then, and 
took to begging. I saw a million or maybe a bil¬ 
lion beggars in Saragossa when I was there, and 
every one of them looked older than Noah him¬ 
self ! ” Then he suddenly remembered that Bill 
was penniless, and that he himself had made a 
break, and he was wishing he could relieve his 
feelings by blushing, when Bill said: 

Saragossa’s the spot for me! By Gad! I’m 
going there! ” It tickled his fancy to think of all 
those ripe old beggars taking rest as a profession. 
He thought if he could work his way that far, he’d 
like to see how they did it. For himself he could 
not imagine how anybody could ever willingly rest, 
or ever willingly beg. 

Bill put blisters on his hands working himself 


THE CHRISTIAN BOY BILLY-TEARS 89 


across to England, and blisters on his feet walking 
himself through France. He also had earned some¬ 
thing here and there, which he kept until he should 
see Saragossa. When he got there he meant to live 
at a hotel and enjoy himself,—looking at the beg¬ 
gars ! It was a funny little whim—^but he got a 
lot of rest just enjoying the notion. He figured he 
had just enough money to stay at a hotel in Sara¬ 
gossa for two weeks. He failed to earn a little 
extra money to throw to the beggars. Bilks big 
mistake! 

He arrived on a Friday, the thirteenth, if that 
had anything to do with it, and took a room at the 
Hotel of the Universe. Before he had been there 
an hour his hotel keeper’s wife had pointed out 
Fernando, who lay begging in front of the hotel, 
and gave the history of Fernando’s family. 

This Fernando had a wife and nine children. 
And all of them begged. So Billy could see how 
prosperous and well fixed they were, couldn’t he? 
Fernando always sat in the shadow of the Hotel of 
the Universe itself. Signor, and invoked all the 
saints in heaven to smile on any stranger who gave 
him a curato for his blindness. Bill felt a pang of 
sympathy for Fernando’s blindness, until he saw 
Fernando’s eyes gleam, when somebody threw him 
a duro! 

The wife of Fernando, it seemed, lay further up 
the boulevard, in the plaza, and invoked the saints 
for her lameness. Then how she could pick up and 


90 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


run home nights! Eight of Fernando’s hoys played 
pelota with the street waifs, and when anyone came 
along they all asked his worship to give them a 
penny for the love of God! ” 

Fernando’s ninth hoy lay beside his mother, and 
because he was really lame was the pride and joy 
of the household. Why not ? Anyone could see in 
an instant how crippled he was, from his suffering 
little face to his scrawny little feet. And his father 
and mother had shown no end of cleverness in tying 
all sorts of unpatented bags, boxes, plates and nets 
about his tired little body to catch a stray penny. 
Yes, the Signor had only to go that way, and Fer¬ 
nando’s eight brothers would adjure him by every 
wonder on the face of the earth to stop and look at 
that object of charity yonder; to give the pobreeito 
SL glance out of his blessed eyes, and a Ihnosna out 
of his most illustrious pocket! 

But if Signor refused to look out of his blessed 
eyes, or take anything out of his illustrious pocket, 
it was then time for the mother to elevate her little 
lame boy before Signor, point out his poor little 
legs, and smirk upon that hopeless misery. It 
never failed to work. Signor, for of course it hurt 
the little boy when his mother picked him up sud¬ 
denly and twisted him about so that the stranger 
might examine him. The tears would come into 
his big, soft eyes, eyes so deep and black they 
looked almost blue, almost like the periwinkle 
flowers which Americans call myrtle, but which 


THE CHRISTIAN BOY BILLY-TEARS 91 


the Spaniard calls the tears of Jesus Christ.” 
And that is how he got his name, Signor, for his 
name was Tears! ” 

When Bill heard all this he began to wish he had 
not come to Saragossa. If Tears was a real boy, 
how he must hate his name and his business and 
his lameness. How he must want to be a big hoy 
who could run in the streets and play pelota. 
Even if he was the family pet and lived on honey 
and snails and mushrooms and eggs, how he must 
hate his life, and his town, and the strangers who 
threw a glance at his tortured little legs and a 
penny into his hot little hands. Tears must hate 
the world! Young Dr. Watt decided that he had 
better keep away from Tears. He had hardly a 
cent to spare, and the desire to saw up the hones 
of Tears’ mother, according to the best he knew of 
Gray’s Anatomy, he felt, would be almost too over¬ 
powering. 

He was strengthened in this decision, when a 
day or two later the wife of the keeper of the Hotel 
of the Universe told him that she had heard Fer¬ 
nando saying that Tears had suddenly developed 
more of a lameness and a crying about his back, 
than about his legs. He moaned and groaned all 
day long now, whether his mother picked him up 
to show to strangers or not. His mother had to let 
him lie with his little body bent over her lap in 
just one position all the time, or he could not rest. 
Her legs and arms went to sleep trying to keep 


92 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


him in this position, and begging was fast losing 
its charms. 

Dr. Bill had been in Saragossa just one week. 
He had just money enough to stay two weeks. If 
he could have walked the streets freely, as he had 
expected to, he could have forgotten Tears. But 
he was almost a prisoner in his hotel. If he 
stepped outside, beggars swarmed about him. Be¬ 
cause he spoke American, he must be rich ! Because 
he would not give, he must be stingy! They say 
Spanish is the language to speak with God, but at 
such hours Bill thought it sounded less than celes¬ 
tial! Far less! He wished he never had come. 
He wished he were gone! But Tears dragged on 
the heels of his spirit. He kept thinking of the 
boy’s spine—and wondering if it couldn’t be fixed 
this way—or that way. 

So at last, just to rest his mind. Bill decided to 
take a look at Tears. Probably the little beggar 
was not half so sick as the Signora said he was! 
Certainly she showed great elasticity of imagina¬ 
tion in the price of meals, that Signora! But sup¬ 
pose Tears really was as sick as reported, what 
could Bill do about it? 

Don’t they have any hospitals ? Why don’t 
they send Tears to a hospital ? ” Bill asked. 

O—0—0! The hos—pi—tal was s—o—o—o 
many blocks away! Maybe ten! It cost so—o—o 
many reales to get the Signor Doctor! ” About the 
price of a week’s board at the Hotel of the Uni- 





THE CHRISTIAN BOY BILLY-TEARS 93 


verse, Bill figured. He took a walk to think 
it over. 

Nope, he couldn’t see anj hope for Tears, as he 
went into the dim, beautiful inside of the Cathedral 
Del Pilar to think it over. No hope for Tears, 
Bill had decided, as he came out of the Cathedral 
Del Pilar with the homely green and white and 
yellow domes on the roof. Domes which looked 
like soap boilers! The beggars swarmed about him 
now, and he wished the domes on the roof really 
were soap boilers, so that he could put every beggar 
in and sterilize him! He wished he were an 
American rag-picker by trade, and he could gather 
up all these beggars. Why, he could comer the rag 
market and scoop up a million dollars! If he had 

a million dollars he could afford- Bother! he 

had settled Tears, and here he began to think of 
him again! 

Tears’ mother was just saying to the lady beggar 
squatting next her, because mercy, yes! there was 
a beggar for every streak of light and a beggar for 
very streak of shadow down the long arcade on the 
plaza. Ah, me,” she was just saying, beside 
the prickling of my hands, there is such a buzzing 
in my ears ! ” 

It is the sound of a leaf falling from the tree 
of life,” said the next beggar lady unconsolingly. 

It is a sign that something very strange will 
happen,” said the beggar gentleman on her left. 

At that moment Bill appeared. Should he know 



94 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Tears wlieii lie readied him ? Ah, jes, there he lay, 
poor littl brat, asleep across his mother’s knees. 
Even at that distance Dr. Bill noticed how un¬ 
natural was Tears’ position, and his heart opened 
within him. 

The mother of Tears hated to wake her little son, 
especially since he had become so peevish, but 
here was a desperate case; the stingy stranger they 
had all talked about, who was so rich and who gave 
to nobody! Her professional pride was pricked. 
Let the world see this man who gave to nobody, give 
to Tears! She would show what a fine beggar she 
was, what a never-failing blessing was Tears! 

Bill started to pass by. She cried out to him to 
look at this object of charity, and shoved Tears up 
under Bill’s eyes. 

Awakened so roughly, Tears let go of the little 
sob with which he had fallen asleep. Then every¬ 
thing seemed to happen. It was almost as sudden 
and quite as much a miracle as when the great old 
bronze Madonna on the steeple whistled down on 
her virgin wings to the feet of the Spanish 
Grandee. 

Bill didn’t whistle dowm to the feet of Tears, but 
he snatched him out of his mother’s astonished 
arms. It was absolutely no use to try to talk 
American to a woman who understands no Ameri¬ 
can, so that all he said was in the nature of 
a soliloquy. 

Crazy woman, don’t dare handle that kid like 


THE CHRISTIAN BOY BILLY-TEARS 95 


that! Don^t you know you are laming him for 
life! Here, now, just a second! Listen to that! ’’ 
and Doctor Bill who had been hurriedly feeling the 
hones of Tears’ little spine, suddenly snapped two 
of them back into place. 

Tears’ mother screamed! the stranger was break¬ 
ing his bones! The beggars from all around 
swarmed about him. Bill picked up Tears and ran 
for the Hotel of the Universe, but Fernando and 
a host of his tribe rose in the path! 

Now don’t get all steamed up! ” said Bill. 
Give me half a chance and I can fix up this kid, 
and don’t believe I can’t! ” 

The keeper of the Hotel of the Universe followed 
his wife into the tumult. Dr. Bill explained that 
he only wanted a chance to lay the little fellow 
down on a quiet bed and get the nearest surgeon in 
consultation. If they would let him do that he 
could make Tears walk! Bill won. But Signor 
Fernando and his wife, the Signora, kept a close 
watch. They gave Bill the ugliest stares, and Bill 
was just saying to them, Y^es, Dear Sir and Dear 
Madame, if words could poison me, I should even 
now lie cold at your feet,” when the surgeon from 
So—0—o—o ” far away came into the room. 

Gad, boy, you did it! ” he said in the Spanish 
equivalent as soon as he had felt of Tears’ little 
spine. By gad, boy, you’re a wonder! ” He 
looked Bill over more closely than he had examined 
Tears. He made Bill tell him his name, and why 



96 STOKIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


lie was there, and why he had spent his last cent 
(Bill could not disguise the flatness of his purse) 
to bring a surgeon to a little boy he had never seen 
before. 

Oh/' said Bill, I sold myself the idea that 
the kid could walk. What are we going to do with 
him now ? He can't lie and beg on the pavement! 
He needs a plaster corset and a nice little cradle 
for about two months, doesn't he, doctor ? " 

The end of it was that the surgeon from S—s— 
s—s—0 far away took Bill and Tears back to his 
hospital with him. He was short of doctors, and, 
oddly, he had taken the most unaccountable fancy 
to Doctor Bill. And Bill, oddly, had taken as 
strange a fancy to Tears! 

It w^as Christmas day when Tears’ mother came 
to take him home again. Child of gold! Child 
of silver! Child of pearls! " she cried when she 
saw him walk. 

He led her into a room where lay a world of 
boys. A tree as tall as a mountain glistened with 
candles, sticks of caramel sugar and Angel’s 
hair " candy. Yes, it was Christmas, when all the 
world sang. Even a squad of bigger boys came in 
and sang a canzonet all about the birth of the Holy 
Child, and after saluting the Virgin, and Joseph, 
and the Holy Christ Child, made their adieux even 
to the cattle in the stable, singing, Adieux, Sir 
Ox; Adieux, Sir Mule! May God be with you! " 
But the very, very, very last thing, just before 




THE CHRISTIAN BOY BILLY-TEARS 97 


Tears left, somehow he and Dr. Bill found them¬ 
selves in each other’s arms. Buck up, Billy^ little 
lad,” Dr. Bill was saying. I’ll tell the world 
we’re great stuff, you and I! ” 

My name is not Bil-lee,” said Tears, in plain¬ 
tive Spanish. 

Oh, yes, it is,” said Dr. W. McDermott Watt, 
that’s my Christmas present to you—Billy- 
Tearc! ” 


CHINA 


XI 

Little-Sister-Two Is Stolen 


T here was mourning in the house of 
Little-Sister-Two’s honourable father. 
The lamps and doorsteps and signs at 
the front door had been changed from their every¬ 
day red to white. In the front parlour (or what¬ 
ever they called the room) Honourable Parent sat 
as stiff as a poker in one of the teakwood chairs 
ranged primly along the wall. On either side of 
the room a long line of prim old men kept him 
company. For Little-Sister-Two was gone! On 
the sixth day of the eighth moon, which was the 
day before the day before that day, Little-Sister- 
Two had vanished! Pouf! Out of the house! 
Out of the very air—just like that! And nobody 
could find her again! 

It was the height of the festival of the Friendless 
Ghost, when wealthy Chinamen, who own sing-song 
girls, bring them out to sing for guests at great 
feasts! When preparations are already being made 
for the Harvest Moon festival; at which time 

thanksgiving is made to the gods for all the bless- 

98 


LITTLE-SISTER-TWO IS STOLEN 99 


ings of the year; at which time one must pay every 
debt. Yes, it was at this busy time of year that 
some old friendless ghost, probably Little-Sister- 
Two’s dead-and-gone husband, had snatched her 
right out of the family! 

Little-Sister-Two had been the very prettiest 
widow in all China. Her eyes were as slanty as 
a kitten’s. Her cheeks were as heavy with paint 
as an idol’s. Only a bold, bad little girl would go 
with her cheeks shamelessly unpainted in China! 
Little-Sister-Two had worn the darlingest satin 
coat and trousers of bright orange, all embroidered 
over with roses. Oh, and I forgot! She had worn 
her hair in a stiff roll over one ear, and twined 
with the stunningest paper flowers! You know 
what that meant, don’t you? Well, it meant that 
she was quite properly and honourably engaged to 
a man her father had picked out for her to marry. 
So you see, that although she had been born a 
widow, having been married before she was bom 
to an old, old man, she had now outworn her 
widow’s weeds, and could marry again. Of course 
her aged bridegroom had taken a chance, as she 
might not have happened to be a girl, but then she 
would have had to marry one of his family women! 
—instead of himself! 

And now she was gone—^gone in her orange suit, 
which was bright enough to be seen a mile-and-a- 
half! They took her Honourable Parent his black¬ 
ened pipe for consolation! They filled it with fra- 



> ) > 


100 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


grant leaves and lighted it for him! They lit the 
tapers before the shrine of the ancestors! And 
away back in some corner of the house Little-Sister- 
Two’s mother wanted to cry her eyes out with fear 
and grief. Of course in China, women, like proper 
copy-book children, are neither seen or heard. 
Honourable mothers must not even weep. It sim¬ 
ply isn't done! 

It so happened that the oldest and most illus¬ 
trious of the old men who kept Little-Sister-Two^s 
father company in the front parlour (or whatever 
they do call that stiff and frightful room where he 
sat) got to looking more and more queer every mo¬ 
ment that passed. Louis Ying his name was, and 
he was the person who was actually engaged to 
marry Little-Sister-Two! More and more of the 
whites of his eyes got to showing, until he looked 
a good deal as if he were trying to peek through at 
the works in his brain! 

Of course it would have oeen horrid etiquette to 
say a word, I suppose, and not a man there but 
looked as peacefully mournful as if he had just gone 
Into a trance. But all of them noticed Louis Ying's 
strange behaviour (turning one’s eyeballs wrong- 
side-out is strange behaviour, if I am any judge), 
and though they kept on looking so calm it made 
you nervous to watch them, they were just eaten 
up with curiosity. 

What was Louis Ying thinking about? 

Did he Icnow something he hadn't told? 


LITTLE-SISTER-TWO IS STOLEN 101 


Was it sometiiing about Little-Sister-Two? 

Well, of course old Louis Ying was no detective, 
but an idea certainly bad occurred to him, which 
was just about churning his stomach upside down 
with excitement (Chinamen keep their brains in 
their stomachs, if you ask them), and he wondered 
he hadn’t thought of it before. As soon as was at 
all dignified, probably hours afterward, he left that 
roomful of prosperous appearing undertakers (or 
that’s how they looked) and started out to chase up 
his clue. 

Don’t ask me how Louis Ying worked his brains. 
I’d rather figure out a Chinese puzzle. But any¬ 
way, he went straight from that house of mourning 
to a feast! He knew a very rich merchant who 
gave wonderful dinners and was rich and dignified 
beyond compare. He owned sing-song girls. They 
sang at his feasts. Sometimes he boasted about 
them, the way very rich heathen will do! 

Louis Ying took a seat beside this rich China¬ 
man, and began very merrily to eat his dessert. 
(Dessert comes first and soup last in China.) 
Louis started the rich old man talking about his 
sing-song girls, how many he had, and how many 
he would like to have, and how beautiful they were 
and how much they cost him, and all that. And 
then Louis said, ^'Well, old fellow, maybe you 
think these sing-song girls of yours are good-look¬ 
ing, but I don’t!” (or insulting words to that 
effect). 


102 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


The rich man nearly fainted from surprise and 
wrath. Here was Louis Ying eating his illustrious 
pudding and sitting by his illustrious side and 
telling him his sing-song girls were homely! 

I’ll show you! ” he bubbled—and steamed—in 
his wrath. I shall have them in immediately. 
You shall look well at them while they sing for 
you! ” 

Cat’s foot! ” rejoined Louis Ying. I’ve seen 
every one of the old batch. Show me some new 
ones!” (or words to that impertinent effect). 

The rich old merchant regarded Louis with a 
long, unloving stare. Then a different look came 
over his heavy face. Ha! ha! Louis, my 
friend,” he said, smiling (or words which meant 
the same), “I begin to see through you and your 
ridiculous bluff. You want me to show you the 
new sing-song girl I bought of Mr. Wong, don’t 
you? I boasted to you about her beauty. I told 
you I had paid $325.00 cash for her unusual 
beauty, did I not? And now you want to see her, 
my friend, before she is trained to sing? Is it 
not so ? ” 

But instead of directly answering his question, 
Louis Ying very Yankishly asked him another. 

So you bought her of Wong, the little shop¬ 
keeper, did you ? ” he asked. And when the old 
merchant nodded, Louis Ying began to turn his 
eyes wrong-side-out again, in the frightful way he 
had done at Little-Sister-Two’s house. Which I 


LITTLE-SISTERr-TWO IS STOLEN 103 


submit is not the way for a guest to look, either 
when he sips your pleasant soup, or mourns your 
darling daughter. 

Louis Ying did not hurry through his dinner, 
but at the end of that day he came to the little shop 
of Mr. Wong and waddled in. Mr. Wong, who 
lived next door to Little-Sister-Two’s father, was 
not expecting anybody, or he certainly would 
not have been sewing his kimono onto himself, 
would he? 

Old Louis Ying did not even know Mr. Wong 
as well as you do, but he went straight over to him 
and took a good look at his sewing, which I believe 
was the most impolite of all the impolite things old 
Louis Ying had done that day. 

Instead of jumping up and giving him a left to 
the jaw, Mr. Wong began to tremble like an aspara¬ 
gus fern in an earthquake. He dropped his needle 
and picked it up and turned a poisonous green 
(the effect of blue fright under a yellow skin, no 
doubt), tried to sew, pricked his thumb, and said 
a few hasty words in Shanghai-ese which meant, 

I wish you would mind your own business, you 
dizzy old nightmare! ” 

Louis Ying, who had been looking all around 
Mr. Wong’s little shop in the most inquisitive man¬ 
ner, now bent over Mr. Wong. He put his hand 
into Mr. Wong’s coat and drew out three bars of 
gold! Three whole bars of gold which Mr. Wong 


104 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


had been sewing so neatly into the lining of his 
kimono! 

What are these?’’ asked Louis Ying, holding 
the three gold bars and staring and staring at 
them. 

Mr. Wong looked ready to faint. Do not tell 
on me,” he implored. I was a poor man. I 
owed one hundred dollars. The Festival of the 
Harvest Moon was coming on. I had no money 
to pay my debts. What should I do ? I ask you, 
as man to man, what on earth could I do ? ” 

Do ? ” said Louis, handing back two of the 
bars of gold, but still holding the third one in his 
hand, you could sell your family jades in the 
street, perhaps ? ” But he knew Mr. Wong had no 
family jades. Mr. Wong was the kind of a poor 
man who has neither a family or jades. 

I had none,” said Mr. Wong, dejectedly, as he 
saw the bar of gold still lingering in Louis Ying’s 
fingers. 

What did you do ? ” asked Louis, very sternly. 
Well, it was like this,” uttered Mr. Wong. 

And if I give you my bar of gold for hush money, 
as you seem to expect, you must never breathe of 
what I am about to utter! ” 

Oh, I won’t,” said Louis Ying affably, and 
slipped the bar of gold into his own kiniono. 

Jlist trust me with your secret, and I’m much 
obliged for the gold, I assure you! ” 

Well, then,” said Mr. Wong, looking dubious, 


LITTLE-SISTER-TWO IS STOLEN 105 


but somewhat brighter, and beginning to sew the 
two bars of gold back into the wadding of his 
jacket very fast, you know my neighbour next 
door, don’t you ? Or maybe you don’t. He is one 
of the chicken-livered Sen Suey Folk tong, which 
is a peaceable tong. It settles its disputes with 
spot cash and not with the gun! ” Here he gave 
way to a homely sneer which showed up all his dis¬ 
dain and wrinkles. Such a tong has no teeth! 
One could laugh at such unblushing peace people! 
So when I had no money and $100.00 cash debts, 
I simply snatch the most beautiful of my neigh¬ 
bour’s daughters,—^like this—^ha ! ha!—and sell 
her for $325.00 for a sing-song girl, while her 
family mourn! How I have paid my debts and I 
still have two bars of gold. I will go to Ningpo 
and take a boat, tra-la! How happy I am! My 
troubles are ended! But, magnificent Sir, since 
you have taken a whole gold bar for hush money, 
see that you tell no one !’^ 

No, of course not,” said Louis Ying, with his 
tongue in his cheek, and immediately left Mr. 
Wong to his empty shop and his sewing. 

Now of all the amazing behaviour of Louis Ying 
that day, this last was the most amazing. He of 
course knew exactly where Little-Sister-Two was, 
yet he never lifted his finger that night. He sim¬ 
ply went home to his old and impossible bed with 
Mr. Wong’s hush money in his kimono and never 
did a thing! But next morning, honestly you 


106 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


would have thought next mornings he would have 
•got her, being engaged to her, and everything, 
wouldn't you? But no sir! he never stirred a 
finger. Nor the next day. Nor the next. If he 
had had the imagination of a canary bird he must 
have known that Little-Sister-Two wasn't feeling 
any too gay. Even in her satin coat and pants of 
bright orange! 

But somehow or other, a week after that, just as 
the wicked Wong was blithesomely boarding his 
boat at Ningpo, he was arrested! Yes, sir! Just 
the moment he put his foot to the boat. Such re¬ 
fined cruelty is too mysterious for me. Maybe it 
was just Louis Ying’s idea of a joke. That same 
day, however, and that same hour, there came into 
the funeral room of her father’s, the bird-like pat¬ 
tering of Little-Sister-Two’s feet. Orange coat and 
all, Little-Sister-Two had come home! 

Did her father rear up from his teakwood chair 
and throw out his arms and hug her? Well, I 
guess not! You mustn't judge the ceremonious 
Sen Suey folk by the impulsive Louis Ying. The 
Illustrious Parent just sat there and sat there, and 
on the other side of the room Louis Ying sat there, 
and Little-Sister-Two might have been a sudden 
orange-coloured ghost for all they seemed to notice. 
But in the back rooms of the house poor little flut¬ 
tering Sister-Two found warm mother arms 
waiting for her; and her sisters. One and Three, 


LITTLE-SISTER-TWO IS STOLEN 107 


squeezed her; and lier father’s son smiled upon 
her, and life began again. 

Little-Sister-Two’s father had noticed her, how¬ 
ever; he was glad she was found and everything, 
just like a regular parent. For that very night a 
beautiful pair of blue jade earrings found their 
way up the stairs to Little-Sister-Two. Another 
present came also, a mysterious present all done up 
in wrappings like a mummy; a present from her 
engaged-to, and about-to-be-married-to. Personage, 
Louis Ying, who had sat downstairs in the teak- 
wood chairs these days of mourning. After Little- 
Sister-Two had unwrapped and unwrapped and un¬ 
wrapped it, it lay in her hand at last—a single bar 
of gold! 

So you see that even in China people do steal 
from Peter to pay Paul. Steal Peter’s daughter, 
in fact, which is rather putting on the finishing 
touches. People are stunningly alike wherever you 
go, even when their names are Ring-Ting-Ling in¬ 
stead of just Judy or William. 


JAPAN 


XII 


The Gift of the Bronze Bull 

OSHI hated to miss the party. She could 



hear Aki in her garden next door already 
counting out: 

Dzui—Dzui—Dzukorohashi— 


Gomamiso—Dzui— 
Chu—^Chn—Chu ! " 


Whomever Aki pointed to when she said that 
last Chu! ’’ would he the fox, and all the other 
little girls would be chickens and run away from 
her. 

Toshi had told her mother she was going to that 
party too! And she had told her grandmother, 
and her father. And they had let her put on her 
newest, sweetest kimono. And all the time she 
knew she wasn’t going! How could she, when there 
was something else so necessary to do? Something 
for her very own mother? 

The point of the whole matter was, that some¬ 
thing had happened to Toshi’s mother. First she 
had been very sick, days and days sick, and then 
when she got better she was very weak. Just weak 


108 


THE GIFT OF THE BRONZE BULL 109 


all over and limpsj. She could hardly look at you 
out of her eyes. And then she got strong every¬ 
where else but in her eyes. Now it was said that 
she must go to the hospital. 

What will they do to my mother at the hos¬ 
pital ? ’’ Toshi had asked in alarm. 

Oh/’ her grandmother said, somebody will 
put big bandages over your mother’s eyes, and when 
they take them off again she will see! ” 

Toshi looked square at her grandmother, and 
somehow she began to be afraid. 

They will take my mother away and never 
bring her back! ” she thought in the most private 
part of her heart. And at that moment she de¬ 
cided to keep her mother from the hospital and the 
bandages and everything. But she did not dare 
tell anybody her plan. Her father, who was a 
most illustrious person, and wore twelve kimonos 
when he went out in society to dine (some fathers 
sport only seven or eight kimonos for company 
purposes and look skinny indeed), her illustrious 
father had been educated far East beyond the sea, 
and he would only have laughed at what Toshi was 
going to do. 

So Toshi ran in and said good-by to her mother, 
and slipped the little piece of silk one wraps up 
presents in, into her long sleeve, and then ran in 
and said good-by to her grandmother, and then 
pushed back the sliding doors of the house and 
stepped into her wooden shoes. Then out through 


110 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


a big closed gateway, with a little door at one side, 
and now the bamboo fence on her side of the street, 
and the cedar fence on the other side of the street, 
hid her from all but the tiled roofs of the houses. 

In the next garden she could hear Aki squealing, 
and a fierce little girl-fox crying, Kong-Kong! 
Kong! Kong! 

She did not stop to listen. With her long 
sleeves swinging, the red linings showing, she ran 
on. She had planned exactly what she should do. 
She would go to the temple, you know, the gold 
and glittery one where the gorgeous bronze bull 
stood. This bronze bull was a marvel. Really he 
was. If you had a pain in your leg, you rubbed 
your leg against the bronze bull’s leg and that 
would take the pain away. Really it would. 
Toshi’s friends in school all knew people who had 
tried it! Just the same with earache. Rub the 
bronze bull’s ear! Oh, really! Honestly and 
truly! People came from all over the whole world 
to rub the bronze bull and get well. No matter 
what was the matter with them, bubonic plague, or 
pleurisy, or tuberculosis, or sore throat, all they 
had to do was to rub the bull’s lungs or neck with 
their lungs or neck, and it worked! 

Toshi had suggested that her august father take 
her mother to the bull and let her rub her eyes on 
the bull’s eyes. He actually turned pale at the 
notion, and said a lot of heathen words about 


THE GIFT OF THE BRONZE BULL 111 


germs ’’ and “ contagion/^ and looked almost wil¬ 
ling and ready to spank poor Toslii. 

It was no use talking to older people. They al¬ 
ways thouglit they knew so mnck more than chil¬ 
dren. Toshi knew quite well that when she grew 
up she would listen to everything her little girl told 
her and do it, too. She would show her little girl 
that she understood that little girls did know some¬ 
thing. And her husband would feel exactly the 
same way! 

At that, Toshi reached the temple. Perhaps you 
wonder what good it would do her to go near the 
Bronze Bull without her mother. Well, she had 
brought the little piece of silk in her sleeve to rub 
the bull’s eyes with, and then she would carry it 
home and rub her mother’s eyes with it! Wasn’t 
that a good idea? You see little girls do know 
something, sometimes! 

There was a crowd of people all about the tem¬ 
ple. An old priest with long white whiskers had 
been preaching, and Toshi could hear all the people 
raising their voices together in the closing invoca¬ 
tion, ‘^Namu amida—dabutsu! Namu amida— 
dabutsu! Namu amida—dabutsu!” 

Toshi suddenly felt very slender and timid, and 
young^ not at all like the self-confident Toshi, who 
a moment before was willing to assure her own lit¬ 
tle children that they knew something. There was 
a group of pilgrims before the Bronze Bull, wait¬ 
ing a chance to smoothe out his contours with their 


112 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


aclies and pains. Toshi felt lierself crowded in 
amongst them, and oh, hut some of them smelled 
queer! She clung tightly to her little piece of silk, 
and she thought she waited hours. Suppose Aki’s 
party should he all over before she got home, and 
her honourable father should find out where she 
had been! Suppose she should get her kimono 
soiled and torn in this awful crowd ? Suppose—— 
Suppose they should take her mother to the hos¬ 
pital before she got home? 

With that terrible thought in her heart she wrig¬ 
gled and twisted in among the pilgrims, in and in 
and in! She could hardly breathe, they smelled 
so queer! She could not see, they were so tall! 
They groaned! They grumbled! They moped! 
They scowled! They surged forward, and Toshi 
surged forward with them pressed by gaunt el¬ 
bows, squeezed by bony arms and legs and crutches. 
But oh, she was glad it was hard, because she was 
doing it all for her mother! 

Now the man in front of Toshi went up to the 
Bronze Bull. He did what many had done before 
him—he rubbed his eyes on the eyes of the bull. 
Then he turned and Toshi saw that his eyes looked 
oh, so ragged and red—^horrible eyes! At that 
Toshi held up her little piece of silk to rub the 
bull’s eyes, and could not reach! 

Oh, she must! It was for her mother! With 
a sob she reached again! The cripple behind her 
held her up. With a supreme sigh of gratitude 



THE GIFT OF THE BRONZE BULL 113 


she polished the bull’s great eyes with the little 
piece of silk, and then the cripple let her down 
again. Very carefully she folded the silk and put 
it into her long sleeve and ran out of the temple! 

Every few minutes she had to stop and see that 
her piece of silk was securely folded, and safe in 
her sleeve, so that the magic would not fall out. 
In fact, she stopped so often for this purpose that 
she gave rather the look of a little bird who tries 
to count its feathers (if little birds ever do). When 
she came to the street where rowdy little children 
hang about, little girls with rough, homely kimonos 
and all seeming to wear street-car conductors’ caps, 
or old felt hats of no particular shape, and every 
size, she began to attract a great deal of notice. 
She must be carrying something precious in her 
sleeve, if she had to be so careful about it! They 
crowded around her. Give us some! Give us 
some! ” they cried. 

Toshi looked at them despairingly. How could 
she make them ever understand ? She tried to 
push past them. They were a wall of intent little 
eyes. 

Give us some! Give us some! ” they cried 
again. 

She put her hand into her sleeve. The piece of 
silk was still there! I haven’t anything! ” she 
cried. She pulled out the little piece of silk. It 
looked quite empty, though she was careful to keep 
it folded. See, that is all I have! ” she said. 


114 STOEIES FKOM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


They snatched it from her. They felt of it. 
They threw it from one to the other. Then they 
flung it in her face. Before she could catch it, it 
fell to the ground. 

Before she could pick it up they began to push 
her. To scream at her. To say ugly words to her. 
Toshi trembled with fright. If only she could go 
back and pick up the precious piece of silk. Per¬ 
haps the Bronze Bull’s healing would not be quite 
all lost. Perhaps she would have time to run back 
to the temple and rub him again! 

Then suddenly they let go of her—the cruel 
children left her; when she went back and found 
the poor little rag of silk, and brushed off the dust 
and straightened out the tom and rumpled little 
mess of it, she saw quite clearly that its magic was 
gone! It had all been wiped off on the sidewalk! 
And it was getting dark! She must run! She 
must run home, with no healing for her mothePs 
eyes! The tears started to her own eyes. And 
then and there, like every other Eve-child, she had 
a good cry, right where she stood, carefully wiping 
her eyes on the poor dirty little piece of silk. 

When she got home she forgot to call Gomen 
nasai ” as she entered. And that was like ringing 
the bell I She had slipped off her wooden shoes and 
left them on the doorstep. But she did not forget 
to go to her grandmother and bow very low and 
respectfully, saying: Grandmother, I have come 
back! ” She was just about to turn and go to her 


THE GIFT OF THE BRONZE BULL 115 


motlier, and salute lier in the same way. But her 
grandmother called her back. 

Do not cry, Toshi/’ said her grandmother 
gently. Your mother has gone to the hospital. 
To-morrow, if all goes well, you and I shall be al¬ 
lowed to go and see her! 

Toshi clung to her grandmother. Why couldnT 
anything ever happen right? If only she had got 
home in time! If only! 

She cried and cried all night long. The next 
day her eyes were red and swollen. She could 
hardly see out of them! Her father came and 
looked at her eyes. 

Perhaps she caught it from her mother,’’ he 
said. He had a doctor come. No, the trouble with 
Toshi’s eyes was not the same as her mother’s 
trouble. Where had she been? 

Toshi turned so white when he asked her that— 
oh, so sick and scared! When one^s eyes are 
closed, how anybody can read everything hidden 
in the cubby-holes of one’s soul! Toshi could feel 
her father reading her secret, how she had gone 
to the bull,—now that her eyes were closed. She 
told him in little gasps and chokes—^all—every¬ 
thing. She could not see the paleness of his face, 
as she told him about the blind pilgrim with the 
red, ragged eyes, who rubbed the bull’s eyes just 
before her. She could not understand what he 
meant when he said, The gift of the Bronze 
Bull! ” She had gone and wiped the old bull’s 


116 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


eyes. The old bull had not come and secretly 
given her a present! 

They took her to the hospital, and she had a bed 
beside her mother’s bed. Her mother’s bandages 
were off already, they told her. Toshi would have 
to wait awhile to have her own bandages taken off. 
But she did not care^—^much. Being near one’s 
mother, blindfolded, is better than being away 
from her, even with fifty-million-hundred eyes! 


PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 


XIII 

When the Goblins Got Estan 


U sually policemen don’t start out to 
catch a goblin. Not in America, anyway, 
as I ever heard of. But this wasn’t 
America, but the Philippine Islands, and Manila 
especially. And almost anything can happen there, 
as Sir Francis d’Estcotte could have told you. 

Sir Francis had an American mother and red- 
white-and-hlue blood corpuscles; and his name, 
which stated in full much abashed him, went 
something like this: The very right Honourable 
Sir Francis Charles Archibald Toulkes d’Est¬ 
cotte.” 

The police of Manila called him Frankie” for 
short, which pleased him. He was known to have 
more brains and less pay than any other policeman 
on the force, and quite in line with his becoming 
youth and sagacity, was sent out to solve any 
cases ” which puzzled the force. Frankie usually 
solved them, too, just as if he had been a high- 
priced detective. 

Nobody knew there would be anything to solve, 

however, when Estanisiao Puyat first appeared on 

117 


118 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


the scene. He was a native Filipino, and it was 
believed that somebody had tried to drown him in 
the bay. He had been soaking in the water forty 
minutes or so when a ship captain spied him, 
dropped a noose over his head and hauled him 
ashore. 

Oh, my very aunt!’^ said Frankie, looking 
him over. “ I don’t wonder somebody tried to 
murder the animal! ” 

Estan did look more than usually horrible. His 
wetting had changed him from a natty young thing 
of twenty-nine summers, to an old and uninterest¬ 
ing piece of pulp. Besides, he had four eyes! 
Just marvel at that!—four large, horrible, de¬ 
classe eyes 1 Two of them were the regular eyes 
anybody would be expected to have, underscored by 
the two other eyes. These latter optics were neatly 
stencilled in livid blue tattoo marks upon his 
brown cheeks. With his upper eyes closed, and his 
lower eyes staring wide open, he looked like a twin 
brother to the Gob-ble-uns Little Orphant Annie 
used to tell about. And don’t think he didn’t! 

Even Frankie, who never was known to show 
surprise, frankly whistled. But he had little time 
to admire Estan, for other people in Manila were 
having their trials that day. 

Eighteen-year-old boy thrown out of second 
story window,” came the first telephone message, 
with details. 

Fancy!” Frankie remarked, and jotted that 


WHEN THE GOBLINS GOT ESTAN 119 


down. The ’phone rang again: Woman, sixty- 
five, stabbed in eye! ” Erankie jotted that down. 

^^Hands cut off two unknown women 1 ” came 
the third message. What ? ” said Erankie, won¬ 
dering if anybody was trying to play a practical 
joke. 

Eilipino woman, forty years old, slashed by 
bolo in face,” came the fourth message. 

^^Keep it up, keep it up!” Erankie replied, 
with sardonic cheerfulness. They did keep it up. 

Chinese storekeeper slashed. Wounds serious.” 

Chinese cart driver slashed in shoulder.” 

Eilipino woman wounded on forehead and left 
arm.” 

Eight-year-old Eilipino child struck ugly 
wound on neck.” 

Eighteen-year-old Eilipino girl struck nasty 
blow on head.” 

The messages came in in a procession, just like 
that, and stopped. Erankie frankly stared at the 
’phone. Lots of zeal this cheery morning, 
what ? ” he drawled at length, when he seemed to 
consider that he was awake. believe the beg¬ 
gars get damaged just to bother me,” he com¬ 
plained to Bill, the youngest, newest policeman on 
the force. 

I’d say it was the work of a Begani, if you ask 
said Bill. 

A Begani is a man who goes out and kills ten 
men. He doesn’t care what ten men. He has never 


120 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


seen or heard of any of them before, probably. 
But be will be considered a man of valour and be 
allowed to wear a full red suit and look like a fire¬ 
man for the rest of bis life, just because be has 
killed ten men. After be has killed two or three 
men, and seven or eight women and children 
(females do not score so high), be is called a Half- 
Begani, and wears a red and white suit like a fire¬ 
man who fell up to bis waist into a lime barrel. 
This is an old Philippine custom, and nobody has 
any business to feel peeved if a Begani takes a 
notion to pick on him. He would much better take 
out bis concealed' weapons and blow the Begani’s 
head off, and start in to out-Begani nine other 
Beganis, if you understand what I mean. 

Well, I do infer,’^ said Frankie, that bein’ a 
Begani is one of the brightest little things a native 
chap can jolly well do. A Begani, however, does 
not bash people in the eye, arm, forehead or shoul¬ 
der. He only kills them, what-what-what! ” 

He might have lost his nerve, just at the crit¬ 
ical moment,” said Bill. There you have me,” 
Frankie returned. But whoever he is,—if he’s 
responsible for all those crimes, he almost made a 
complete job of the merry little Estan. I say. Bill, 
go on in, while he’s dryin’ out, and get a descrip¬ 
tion of the man who drowned him, will you ? I’m 
going out and play around the streets awhile.” 

Round up the culprits, hey ? ” Bill asked. 

Righto,” said Frankie, apd went. 


.WHEN THE GOBLINS GOT ESTAN 121 


Bill stalked in to Estan, wlio altliongh not yet 
vivacious, was sitting on a chair; Bill implored 
him in terrific Spanish to tell him what had hap¬ 
pened. 

Estan immediately let forth torrents of Tegalog, 
a language he was fond of, hut which sounded like 
a Himalayan dialect to Bill. He, however, ended 
up by saying in his own peculiar Spanish, which 
w^as not the kind of Spanish you learn by the book, 
hut the kind which is washed up from the sea, 
De Malas! de Malas ! de Malas! ’’ 

T^hr-huli! said Bill. De Malas must he the 
name of the man who drowned him! Now go on, 
Estan. Tell Bill how tall this de Malas is, and 
whether he is light or dark complected, and eveTy- 
thing about him. But for heaven’s sake say it 
slow and say it Spanish ! ” 

Estan, however, refused to commit himself fur¬ 
ther. And Bill, becoming discouraged with his 
third degree, blessed Four-Eyes, as he called Estan, 
and left him with the remark that he hadn’t the 
kick of a boiled potato. He had underestimated 
Estan, however, as further events showed. 

Frankie returned some hours later leading a 
young Filipino bride by the hand. Which does not 
mean that Frankie had personally married her. 
She was dressed with the white tayis and pina 
cloth panuela of a bride, although her hair was still 
ungathered in back, in the style of unmarried 
native maidens. Bill looked her over to see if she 



122 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


were missing an eye or anything, but as she was 
not, he turned to Frankie. 

Say,” he said, Four-Eyes was drowned by de 
Malas. I got that much out of him. Ever hear 
of any criminal named de Malas ? ” 

‘‘ Go away. Bill. Go quite away! ” said 
Frankie, waving at him to leave the room. 

But say,” said Bill. You ought to look into 
that de Malas chap. He’s running around loose, 
if you haven’t got him! ” 

Frankie handed the Filipino bride a chair. 
Do you know why so many people get murdered 
these days. Bill ? ” he asked. It’s because they’re 
so maddeningly helpful, what-what-what! ’ 

Bill hurriedly left the room. He heard Frankie 
talking to the bride in low, intimate tones. Sud¬ 
denly she began to answer him with sobs and tears 
in a way no bride should cry. At that Frankie 
began to hum, and suddenly burst into song. 

For Fm called little Butter cup, he sang 
through the closed door, Dear little Buttercup, 

Though I could never tell why, Billy - 

But still Fm called Buttercup, dear little But¬ 
tercup, 

Sweet little Buttercup, aye, Billy!'' At that 
he came out into the main office. You’ve found 
out something,” said Bill. 

Seek not to read my thoughts,” Frankie told 
him sternly. Manila seems likely to be the 
scene of no end of cheery funerals, ere long, 



WHEN THE GOBLINS GOT ESTAN 123 


what? ITl just go in and speak to Estan now, and 
you see that Dolores in there doesn’t take it into 
her head to walk out until I let her.” 

Bill kept an eye on the young bride, but he also 
wanted to hear what Erankie had to say to Four- 
Eyes. So he thoughtfully arranged it by bringing 
the bride out to sit in the Main office. It never 
occurred to Bill that she was in plain sight of 
Estan through the door, or that it was any harm 
if she were. 

Er, how-do-you-do, Essie, old thing,” Frankie 
greeted Four-Eyes. Estan looked up at Frankie 
with a cold, unloving stare. English was not one 
of his accomplishments, and Frankie was talking 
English of a sort. Pm the policeman,” Frankie 
was saying, just the bright and brotherly kind 
you’d expect ” (here he made a jig-saw motion 
around his eyes), and if I could get your pedigree 
and racing form as it were ” (he dropped his voice 
to a melancholy note, and made as if to saw off 
his wrists), I’d really know whether to hang you 
or give you my blessing, what ? ” He paused im¬ 
pressively and looked at Estan. 

Just look at me, you lovely old Thing,” he con¬ 
tinued, making a motion as if to stab himself in 
the shoulder. Somehow your face and your eyes, 
Essie, do not inspire me to put things to your 
better feelings and all that sort of thing to which 
one does put things and so on and so forth.” (He 
made a motion as if to slash himself across the 


124 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


face.) Somehow I do not feel sorry for you. I 
am ashamed to say that from your looks it would 
not have surprised me to find that you wore a red 
suit ” (he made a motion as if wounding himself in 
the neck) and had killed ten men ! However you 
did not wear a red suit or even a suit trimmed with 
red ’’ (he made a motion as if to give himself a 
nasty blow on the head), but I wager that part 
wouldn’t hinder you if you considered Begani- 
work as one of the more restful hobbies, as it were, 
what ? However, that’s neither here or there! 
Now you look at me,” and Frankie suddenly bent 
over him and pointed his finger at him. Young 
man, you- 

The moment Frankie bent forward there was a 
sobbing scream from the other room. Dolores had 
caught sight of Estan. Estan had jumped past 
Frankie, scratched her face, been caught by Bill. 
Dolores had made for outdoors in full terror and 
been caught by Frankie. 

I like that! By Jove, I do like that! ” said 
Frankie indignantly to Bill. I thought I told 

you-” But the screaming and yelling of 

Dolores and Estan became so deafening that both 
of them had to be locked up. How’d you think 
I knew they knew each other ? ” Bill defended 
himself. 

You must understand,” explained Frankie, 
slowly, that she, Dolores, had a dulce corazon, a 
sweetheart, named Francisco, yes? He had built 




WHEN THE GOBLINS GOT ESTAN 125 


a thatclied hahia for her down near the bay. But 
her cousin, Estan, our Four-Eyes, said she must 
not marry Francisco. Instead she must marry 
him, yes ? Dolores only laughed. She did not love 
Four-Eyes. She only loved Francisco. Francisco 
had saved enough money to pay the bell ringer, 
and hire a bamboo band their wedding day, to fol¬ 
low them from the church to the little new nipa 
haliia. But this morning, while Dolores tended to 
baking the pig and camotes and rice for the feast 
to-night, our jealous Four-Eyes threw Francisco 
out of a two-story window. Then he grabbed his 
bolo and ran down the street. Wherever he ran he 
slashed and he struck. It was de Malas! He was 
jealous! He yielded to his passion! Those ten 
crimes belong to him exclusively, and de Malas 
jolly well explains it. He was possessed of an evil 
demon for the moment, what ? The Goblins got 
him! DonT mistake de Malas for a person next 
time, my dear little Billee! Oh, and then Four- 
Eyes tried to drown himself. Fancy!’’ Frankie 
went in and let Dolores out of her cell. 

Well, I hope nobody over here falls in love 
with me,” mused Bill, fervently. 

And Miss Dolores fervently crossed herself, al¬ 
though she understood not a word. 


SOUTH AMEKICA 


XIV 


Benny Sells Linoleum 


I T was the coldest day of the winter, and as 
usual the janitor, who nearly suffocated them in 
mild weather, had to all appearances let the 
furnace go out. 

Benny’s father was deeply engrossed in a hand¬ 
ful of steamship leaflets, and Benny himself was 
astride of the radiator, chanting. 

Absolute hnowledge I have none. 

But my aunt's washwoman s sister s son 
Heard a policeman on his heat 
Say to a labourer on the street. 

That he had a letter just last weeJc 
Written in the finest Greeh, 

From a Chinese coolie in Timbuctoo, 

Who said that niggers in Cuba knew 
Of a coloured man in a Texas town 
Who got it straight from a Circus clown, 

That a man in the Klondike heard the news 
From a crew of South American Jews, 

About somebody in Borneo 

Who heard of a man who claimed to know 

126 


BENNY SELLS LINOLEUM 


127 


Of a swell female society bird. 

Whose mother-in-law was sure she'd heard 
That her seventh husband's sister's niece 
Has stated in a printed piece. 

That she has a son who has a friend. 

Who KNOWS —when the coal shortage u going 
to end! " 

Fine! said Benny’s father, looking up. 
How would you like to go to South America ? ” 
Benny, who had been singing at high speed, 
opened his mouth, hut the question was too big for 
him. What, Dad ? ” was all he said. 

How would you like to go to Bio de Janeiro 
with me ? ” 

Benny slowly got down off the bleak radiator 
and started toward his father. What, Dad ? ” he 
said again, but his wedge-shaped little nose had a 
look of prying into the question. 

I am going next week,” said his father. 

Not—not down to South America!" Benny 
asked in an awed tone. Not down where they’s 
Inca Emeralds—and bushmaster snakes—and 
witch owls which lay a spell on you? You don’t 
mean down there, do you. Dad? ” 

Come again! I don’t quite get you,” said Mr. 
Bussell. Certainly I’m going to South America! ” 
Why, down there," said Benny, much excited, 
the snakes are_ all as big as churches, and their 
fangs stick up like steeples! And you have to eat 
the arms of monkeys made into stew, and drink 


128 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


sap from the cow tree for cream—and thej’s fishes 
no bigger’n a small trout can eat you up, or you 
can even get killed by ants! And vampire bats fly 
through your sleeping-porch screen and sting you 
to death and suck your blood. Honest, Dad, if 
there’s where you’re going (he gave a sigh of su¬ 
preme approval), I call that great! Half the 
snakes aren’t really dangerous,” he added, they 
just rise up in your path and look into your eyes 
as if they wanted to put a hand on your shoulder, 
and never bite or anything. It’s just their way of 
being curious! ” 

Mr. Russell got up suddenly and put his hand 
into his collar, How do you know so much about 
it ? ” he asked Benny, curiously. 

It’s in the story of the ^ Inca Emerald,’ and 
they’s cat-fish big enough to swallow you. They 
leap up at you when you sit in a boat, fishing, and 
pull you in the water and swallow you just like 
Jonah! And the toads and grasshoppers and frogs 
and cicadas scream and squall and groan all night 
long so loud you can’t sleep. And all day birds 
squawk and mew and grunt and whine. And they’s 
one that sings like a sobbing angel. Say, Dad, is 
that straight about you taking me ? ” 

I said I was going to take you to Rio de 
Janeiro,” said Mr. Russell matter-of-factly. 

That’s a city. No snakes whining around the 
streets, Benny, and you want to forget all such 
bric-a-brac before you start. I’m no cross between 


BENNY SELLS LINOLEUM 


129 


Balboa and Roosevelt discovering tbe Amazon! 
I’m going down there to sell the South Americans 
linoleum, the American brand. And when you re¬ 
member, kid, that they’ve never bought a yard of 
linoleum from America, and that they think they 
can get it just as good and just as cheap from Eng¬ 
land, you can see I’m up against something more 
exciting than snakes or voo-doo owls!” He sat 
down again and shuffled the steamship catalogues. 
“ I’ve decided to sail on Saturday,” he said. 

What’s the name of the boat ? ” Benny asked, 
still wuth a spark of interest. Maybe we’ll get 
shipwrecked! ” And being told that the name of 
the boat was Southern Cross, and that they would 
not get shipwrecked, Bennie went out of the room 
forlornly croaking, Mu-ru-cu-tu-tu! ” Which, as 
everyone knows, is the song the witch owl sings in 
the South American jungle, when he would lay a 
spell on one in the darkness. 

Benny, however, seemed unable to lay a spell 
on either his parent or the boat. They made a safe 
passage and came to the city of Rio de Janeiro 
through a harbour so surprisingly beautiful that 
even Benny’s practical father was moved to words. 

Look at that I ” he told Benny. What ? ” said 
Benny. Those hills 1 ” his father pointed out the 
vari-coloured mountains. I thought you saw a 
crocodile or something,” said Benny witheringly. 
At this period of his existence it is certain that 
Benny could have passed through the very gates of 


130 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


Paradise, whicli the Harbour of Rio was said to 
duplicate, without a thrill. Rut had anyone come 
by and offered to sell him a single hair of a man- 
eating lion, for example, and Benny would have 
offered his soul, and every cent he had saved 
toward a new canoe, and considered it a bargain. 
Therefore it was especially difficult for him to keep 
his temper, when he knew he was almost within 
smelling distance of the terror by night, and the 
monkey that flitteth by day; of the jaguar that 
walketh in darkness and the tiger that wasteth at 
noonday. And he must stay in the city! 

The city Avenue Branco was without doubt the 
most beautiful street in the world, and the fashion¬ 
able shopping street, Moreira Cesar, was no more 
than an alley with beautiful buildings! The Na¬ 
tional Library and the Candelaria Church, the 
Municipal Theatre and the Fine Arts Museum 
stood as nothing in Benny's young life. He 
mourned that the World’s Fair had ended. But 
one day he came hounding up the corridor of the 
hotel to his father. 

Hi, Dad! " he hailed him joyfully. Guess 
where I been ! " 

Where have you been, kid ?" his father asked, 
but he did not seem at all energetic with his curi¬ 
osity. In fact, if Benny had been given to noting 
his father's states of mind, he could readily have 
seen that Mr. RusselTs optimism had sunk to 


zero. 


BENNY SELLS LINOLEUM 


131 


Benny drew a long breath. I been to the Na¬ 
tional Museum! ” said Benny. I couldn’t think 
of anything else to do; and I just dodged a lot of 
glass cases of junk and was heading for the door 
to get out again, when an old guy snapped into the 
place with a trayful of jewelry! I didn’t know 
they were jewelry at first, but the minute he came 
in they was lots of excitement, and men popped out 
from doors and bowed, and it was Signor This, and 
Signor That. And this Signor Jazz-a-paz-zaz-za, 
or whatever his name is, told how he had got these 
ornaments from the Chib-something Indians. Dug 
them up himself, and what wonderful skill was 
shown in making them. The gold is all mixed with 
silver, and I was peeking at it over a man with a 
long neck when he saw me. Say, Dad, he stopped 
talking to those fellows and told me a fight he had 
with a tarantula, and it was no fooling either. I’m 
going again to-morrow. He’s going to put them in 
show-cases, and he said I could! ” 

Hum,” said Mr. Bussell, unimpressed. So 
you are interested in anthropology, hey, Benny ? ” 
The next morning, however, Mr. Bussell said he 
would go along with Benny to the National Mu¬ 
seum. Aren’t you going to sell linoleum ? ” 
Benny inquired, struck for the first time by his 
father’s tired eyes and shoulders. 

Not in South America, I’m not. Not a square 

foot. Not a square inch. Unless-” 

Unless what ? ” asked Benny, now fully awake 



132 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


to his father’s plight. Won’t they buy your 
linoleum ? ” 

Not as long as England wants to sell it to 
them/’ he said grimly. I wish I could think of 
some way to curb old England’s desire to spread all 
South America with linoleum! ” 

Oh, you’ll think of something,” Benny said 
consolingly. You aren’t a Yankee for nothing, 
I’ll tell the world!” For ever since Benny’s 
mother had fallen asleep and had not waked up 
again, Benny had understood that he must, in his 
own way, take her place in his father’s life. If 
she had been there, his mother would have taken 
his father’s face into her two hands and kissed 
away all that worry. 

Signor Jazzapazzazza, or whatever was his name, 
greeted Benny and his father as if they had been 
the King and Crown Prince of Portugal, and im¬ 
mediately began to show them the curious Indian 
jewelry. He told them how he was going to 
popularize those designs with all Brazil. Were 
they not beautiful? Were they not worthy of popu¬ 
larity? He would work them out in jewels and 
semi-precious stones such as the Signoras and Sig- 
noritas would rave about I ” 

They’re the snake’s whiskers! I’ll say they 
are! ” Bennie agreed enthusiastically. Gee, Dad, 
if you had those designs on your linoleum, wouldn’t 
they be a whizz! I’ll bet they’d sell, all right I ” 
Mr. Russell looked at Benny a full second, just 


BENNY SELLS LINOLEUM 


133 


as the Giant Goliath must have stared at David 
when that young man hit him between the eyes. 
Then he drew a pencil from his vest pocket and a 
card from his other vest pocket. Would Signor 
permit him to sketch one or two of the designs? 
Oh, Signor was delighted, infatuated! Were they 
not charming ? Beautiful ? Did they not show 
how instinctively taste, skill, art, were part of the 
human soul ?—when Cliihclia Indians could {)ro- 
duce designs which might have taxed a goldsmith 
in the Tiffany Studios of Signor’s country to 
invent ? 

Mr. Bussell replied that he had read somewhere 
that all races of men were of one blood, and con¬ 
tinued to sketch rapidly. Then he and Benny bid 
the Signor almost an affectionate good-by, and Mr. 
Bussell proceeded to send those sketches of Indian 
designs to his linoleum firm in New York with a 
request for samples of same worked out into their 
linoleum. He stated that his linoleums were of the 
right quality and price, but that unless he could 
offer the South Americans something more, they 
were already satisfied with the product they were 
receiving from England. 

The New York firm answered as soon as pos¬ 
sible that they were more than pleased with the 
new designs, and samples of same would follow 
under separate cover. 

When these arrived, Benny had the honour of 
opening them. His father had the,honour of selling 


134 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


them. Not a firm but bought and bought. There 
was a sudden wild demand for these distinctively 
South American patterns. Signor Jazzapazzazza 
never in all his dreams had glimpsed such a popu¬ 
larity of the old Indian designs. His smile must 
have been half rueful, half pleased. He had 
dreamed of working out these patterns in gold and 
rubies, and already they stared at one from cork- 
inlaid textures! Such was the hustle of that so 
great America! 

Benny decided after severe thought that he was 
not meant for an anthropologist, but a linoleum 
salesman. You were up against something more 
exciting than snakes or voo-doo owls all right! 
However, his father saw to it that before they 
sailed for New York, Benny took a trip up a dark 
river which smelled as queer as the old cable-car 
tunnel under the Chicago river on a hot day. Be¬ 
tween themselves they called it the River of Death, 
just for fun, though it was not, and they entered 
it by night, as that was sure to bring three great 
evils down upon one! However, they returned 
alive, and Bennie isn’t sure, if his father should 
happen to sell all the linoleum the world could need 
before he grows up, but he will be a famous ad¬ 
venturer. “ Mu-ru-cu-tu-tu! ” 


MEXICO 


XV 

Maria and the Magic Book 

H EE name, the part she heard most, was 
Maria. The rest of it was de Guadalupe 
and sounded more like some kind of a 
melon than like the name of a ten-jear-old girl, 
unless I tell you that she lived in old Mexico and 
had a rich tan skin and snapping black eyes that 
just went with the name. Maria had four worldly 
possessions—a green parrot, a small brother, a 
lace mantilla and a terrible temper. The lace man¬ 
tilla had been her mother’s—^you can find out in 
the dictionary what a mantilla is—and, as her 
mother and father had been killed and weren’t with 
her now, naturally she loved the mantilla. 

Maria and her brother, Xachito, who was eight, 
lived with their cousin, Don Luis. Luis’s last 
name meant Angels, and Maria and Xachito had 
thought he was Luis of the Angels when he first 
took them to live with him. It had been very 
lonely without Mother and Father, and Cousin 
Luis had a perfectly lovely white marble house. 

He got a duenna to live with them. The duenna 

135 


136 STORIES FROM GROUND THE WORLD 


was a fat, purple-brown woman, who made the 
children do everything she wanted them to. She 
was supposed to be housekeeper and mother for 
Maria and l^achito. Most people would have called 
her a chaperon—that’s what duenna means. 

Maria found it was not nearly so much fun liv¬ 
ing at Cousin Luis’s house as she had expected. 
There was almost nothing to do, and the duenna 
was no good as a playmate. The queerest part of 
it all was that they almost never saw their tall, 
handsome cousin. All day long he sat in a rather 
dark room in an armchair doing nothing. The 
duenna sat for hours every day reading to him in 
a sing-song voice. But when Maria came and stood 
outside the door, hoping to be invited in to get ac¬ 
quainted, the duenna would come hurrying out. 

What do you want, Maria ? ” she would say. 

ISTo, you can not go in. You must run away. You 
must not bother your Cousin Luis.” 

“ Oh, dear,” said Maria one day to Nachito, 
stamping her foot as she spoke. Wouldn’t you 
think anybody would have more sense than to sit 
in a chair and do nothing all day? If he was any 
kind of a sport, he’d find something to do.” 

I don’t care what he does,” said ISTachito gloom¬ 
ily. “ I wish I had something to play with.” 

It was just then that Maria got her lovely idea. 
They would ask the duenna to ask Luis to get them 
a donkey. Just the thing! Such a nice pet! 

‘^You can’t have it,” said the duenna, firmly. 


MARIA AND THE MAGIC BOOK 137 


You have your parrot, haven’t you? ” she added. 

That old parrot!*' Nachito said then, and 
stalked angrily away. The next Maria knew, he 
had tied her beautiful black lace mantilla around 
the parrot’s neck and wound it around and around 
his body, and ended it in a long train down his tail, 
and before Maria could stop him, had actually 
dared push that parrot, lace mantilla and all, into 
Don Luis’s dark room! 

Nachito,” screamed Maria, and jumped up. 
She was so angry with Nachito that she wasted 
several precious seconds trying to catch him. Then 
she burst into Don Luis’s room. 

Where’s my polly ? Where’s my parrot ? ” 
Maria demanded. But Luis only smiled kindly 
at her. 

There he is! ” Maria screamed. For Signor 
Polly had climbed and clawed his way to the top 
of a window curtain where he had proceeded to 
wind himself and his draperies into the curtain. 
He looked too funny for words. He hung there 
now, making horrible noises in his throat. Get 
him down! Get him down!" Maria screamed 
again. But Luis only sat there, staring at her. 

He’ll choke! He’ll die! ” Maria cried, beside 
herself with rage. Get him down, Luis! ” and 
when he didn’t move, Maria began to strike her 
cousin! 

Of course the duenna came in then, and she 
spanked Maria before she took down the polly, so 


138’ STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


that when he did finally com© down he was—dead! 
Choked to death by the curtain and the mantilla. 
Cousin Luis of the Angels just sat and stared at 
nothing and never winked an eyelash! 

Right then Maria’s temper became her greatest 
possession, I’m sorry to say. The queer thing 
about it was that she forgot all about Nachito’s 
part and just hated her Cousin Luis with all her 
heart. She wished and wished there was some¬ 
thing perfectly awful she could do to him. 

On© day when she was outdoors playing, a man 
came along with a load of wire sieves tied on his 
donkey. Just then Maria saw the cook come out. 
Maria stopped playing to come up and look at the 
man’s little donkey and see if cook was going to 
buy a new sieve. Then she saw a very strange 
thing. Instead of looking at the peddler’s wares, 
cook walked up very close to the load and the man, 
with a quick motion of his hands and a glance to 
see that no one was looking, slipped something 
into cook’s pocket. Then she turned around and 
he drove his donkey off down the road. Cook did 
not see Maria at all, and so did not suspect that a 
pair of black eyes were watching her as she stopped 
a moment before going into the house to peep into 
her pocket and pat what she saw there, while a 
sly, wicked smile came over her face. 

Curious Maria ran at once into the kitchen and 
said, What did the old man give you ? Let’s see 


MAKIA AND THE MAGIC BOOK 139 


it, Esperanza, and if ifs nice you’ve got to give 
me half! ” 

Then she stood still in astonishment because Es- 
peranza looked as if she were going to have a fit! 
She turned first red and then purple and then white 
again. It was only for a minute, though, for after 
that she said lots of nice things to Maria, and gave 
her some sweet cookies. While Maria was eating 
them, she watched cook fixing a fine breadfruit on 
a plate. Slyly and almost without Maria’s notic¬ 
ing, she took from her pocket a little paper and 
from the paper a pinch of white powder. This she 
sprinkled on the breadfruit. I wonder if it’s 
sugar,” thought Maria. Then cook turned around 
suddenly, as if she had thought of something. She 
came close to Maria and said, Will you carry this 
breadfruit up to your Cousin Luis ? ” Her voice 
sounded so odd that Maria stared at her. 

I hate my Cousin Luis,” Maria pouted. Let 
Anita carry it to him.” 

The cook smiled more queerly still. No, you. 
Anita is not to see it, or the duenna or anybody.” 

It came to Maria then, that Esperanza didn’t 
like Luis either, and that the old sieve man’s pres¬ 
ent was something which Luis wouldn’t like. The 
old breadfruit would make Luis sick perhaps! 
Well, she hoped so! She’d see that he got it! 

So Maria took the breadfruit and started for 
Luis’s room. The further she went, though, the 
heavier that dish seemed to get, until she could 


140 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


hardly totter along with it. She stopped at every 
sound and looked all around. Then she would say, 

He did kill my polly! ” And that seemed to make 
her dish light enough so she could go on with it. 

Maria stood still to listen at the door. 

Let not your heart he troubled; neither let it 
be afraid,’’ the duenna read. 

“ Oh, dear! ” Maria heard Luis say. If I could 
only read this book to my people. I must try to 
learn it by heart so that I can tell it to them.” 

Just then Maria let the dish fall with an awful 
smash, for like a flash she had understood, as she 
heard Luis’s words. I think she wished she was 
at the North Pole, or the United States—or some 
heathen, far-away place people read about in geog¬ 
raphies, but no Mexican person ever really went 
to. For, you see, what Maria suddenly understood 
was that Luis was blind! Luis hadn’t killed the 
polly! Now he was speaking in a gentle voice that 
made Maria ashamed. She rushed into the room 
crying and showed the astonished Luis the bread¬ 
fruit and the white sprinklings, now almost dis¬ 
solved. Excitedly, but with shame in her face, she 
told the whole story. 

The duenna cried, Ah! ” she said, they took 
your eyes. They will now have your life.” 

No,” said Luis, smiling, though he was very 
pale. Not with you and Maria to guard me. 
And this 1 ” He reached for the little book. 

Please, Cousin Luis,” said Maria softly, with 


MARIA AND THE MAGIC BOOK 141 


no sign of her temper anywhere about, tell me 
about this magic hook, and why the cook and the 
sieve man should he wanting to kill you.’’ 

Come here, Maria,” said Luis, and took her on 
his lap. Then he told her the whole sad story. 
Years ago Maria’s father and Cousin Luis’s father 
had wanted to help their country. They had espe¬ 
cially wanted to give people the best book in all the 
world to read. But there had been wicked men 
who did not want the poor people and common 
people of Mexico to be happier and better off and 
more educated. That was why there had been plots 
and schemes at the end of which Maria’s father 
and uncle and her mother and other members of 
the family, too, had been killed. That was why 
Luis was blind. The old sievemaker, it seemed, 
though Maria could never tell quite why^ belonged 
to those enemies of Maria’s family and so he had 
hoped with Esperanza’s help to put Luis out of 
the way. 

But,” said Luis, at last, we are going to keep 
on, Maria, you and I, doing right for our country, 
Mexico, and for the poor people. This magic book, 
as you call it, will show us the way. I want you to 
read to me out of it.” 

But,” gasped Maria, “ I can’t read.” 

No,” said Luis, and so you must go to 
school.” 

And that was the beginning of wonderful times 
for Maria—^happy times and useful times—for in 


142 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


school she found plenty of playmates and plenty to 
do. But best of all, Maria thinks, is the chance to 
be eyes for Cousin Luis. 

Maria read that book to Luis—not in one day or 
two. But, as she understood it better, she began 
to be a different Maria. She read in the book that 
love and kindness are better than temper, and hap¬ 
pier, too. The Book and the school where she 
learned to read it, and the Sunday School and the 
teachers and Luia and Maria herself have among 
them completely done away with Maria’s old 
temper. Now her most cherished possession is a 
small book which Luis gave her the day she first 
read aloud to him. Can you guess what it was? 
A copy of that same magic book, as Maria calls it. 


THE SUNNY SOUTH 


XIII 


The White Trash Princess and the 
Walking Doll 


L INDY wanted a doll 1 A walking doll I A 
doll that could close its ejes and bend 
over and say ma! ma! 

Although Lindy was nine years old and lived in 
Virginia, she never had seen such a doll, or any 
doll, or anything else, much, except mountains, all 
her life. She was a hidden princess, sort of, and 
more beautiful than you or I will ever be. Her 
hair was tansy gold, and her eyes morning-glory 
blue, and her cheeks the loveliest wild-rose pink in 
the world! 

One remembers how, in the fairy book, the old 
• king hid his princess high in a lonely tower, so 
nobody could harm her. And that is exactly what 
had happened to Lindy. Her mountain was the 
lonely tower, and she had been hidden, not for nine 
years, but for nine generations, ever since a cer¬ 
tain unhappy prince and his princess sailed for 
America to forget their European troubles! Per¬ 
haps they escaped a great deal, finding those tower- 

143 


144 STORIES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD 


like mountains to kide in. Perhaps lots of to-day- 
kings have hungered and thirsted for such private 
mountains the past few years. But anyway, 
Lindy, with all this princess blood in her veins had 
forgotten—she did not remember how grand she 
was. She and her father and mother and twelve 
gaunt brothers had been emptied of all the enchant¬ 
ment by being hidden so long. They were queer 
folks, you^d think, to see them. They were poor. 
They lived in a hut. They slept on the floor to¬ 
gether at night. They never wore pajamas. The 
mother just said, Time to lay down," and like a 
lot of camels in the desert, they all just did lie 
down. 

Well, how Lindy came to hear of any doll, any 
walking doll, was most mysterious. Perhaps her 
tallest brother, a young man who went out to work 
among the furriners," which is what Lindy's 
folks called the outside folks like you and me, had 
seen such a doll. But the moment Lindy heard of 
the wonderful doll, she set her heart on one. She 
thought about it day-times and night-times, and al¬ 
though she knew she was too poor ever to have one 
of her very own, she thought if she could just once 
get a peek at one, just once, for one minute, she 
would live a great deal longer than if she didn't. 

All winter long, when the roads were choked 
with snow, and the skies were full of scattered 
stars, like beads from a broken necklace, Lindy 
thought about the doll. When it came spring 


PRINCESS AND THE WALKING DOLL 145 


again, she decided that she would spend the rest of 
her life sitting hy the great highway, where the 
furriners sometimes slid hy in their motors, 
until she should see such a doll. Some little fur- 
riner ” girl would he holding a doll in her arms, 
and she would look out of the window of her car, 
and the doll would look out with her. The doll, 
the walking doll, might even fall out somehow, and 
Lindy would pick it up, and hug it once, before 
she handed it hack to the furriner ’’ girl. Dreams 
are queer prancy little things, aren’t they? 

Then spring really came, and sometime every 
day Kentucky found time to run down to the great 
highway and wait for the doll to pass by. There 
was a gully close hy, and under the bridge, the 
meekest, twinklest little brook in the world. Most 
brooks roar at you, when spring sets them to busi¬ 
ness, but this little ribbon of water laughed and 
sang and ran along. Lindy sat beside it, day after 
day, and dreamed miles and miles and miles of 
walking dolls. 

But as the sun grew warmer, and the snow 
melted from the mountain tops, the little brook be¬ 
came very big and fat. Folks said it had not risen 
so high in years. Lindy even took to climbing a 
tree just over it, so as not to get her skirts muddy 
sitting beside it. At last the little brook even 
dared run across the great highway. 

Well, of course Lindy knew no furriners ” 
would come along the muddy highway, and she was 


146 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


busier around borne, and her motber was spinning 
and weaving and making ber a gorgeous new dress, 
dyed, ob, tb© most entrancing brown. It made you 
tbink of beautiful rustley oak leaves, it was that 
kind of a brown; it made you tbink of bumming 
birds’ wings, it was that kind of a brown. It made 
you tbink of princes and princesses and fairy 
wands and witches, it was even as beautiful a 
brown as that! It almost mad© Lindy forget tbe 
walking doll, but not quite. 

One day Lindy’s motber let ber put on tbe brown 
dress. Kentucky was going across to tbe other side 
of tbe mountain to see ber little girl cousin, and 
that’s why she was so all dressed up. Of course 
she went barefoot. The roads were still muddy, 
though tbe little brook bad repented of its boldness, 
and now ran meekly under the bridge again. Ken¬ 
tucky stopped to watch it a minute, and that made 
ber begin to tbink about tbe doll. She could see 
now how terribly foolish it was ever to expect a 
doll to ride down that road, any more than for tbe 
moon to roll down that road, and stop and let her 
pick it up. She was glad she never bad told any¬ 
body bow silly she was. This made ber feel some¬ 
what sad, and as there is nothing quite so pleasant 
as to feel sort of sad (when you are nine, or even 
nineteen), Kentucky was really enjoying herself. 

She began to bear a bumming, away off some¬ 
where, like an overgrown mosquito, but as it was 
not time for mosquitoes, she ran across tbe muddy 


PRINCESS AND THE WALKING DOLL 147 


highway and on up the mountain. Her little girl 
cousin, however, was not at home. It seems that 
she also had a new dress, and had run across the 
upper road to show it to Kentucky. The upper 
road was shorter, but Kentucky decided on the 
lower. Eurriners ” might he riding by, they 

might have a little girl, the little girl might - 

Oh, dear!—well, anyway, she just wanted to go 
that way. So she did. 

The nearer she came back to the road again, the 
louder grew that mosquito humming which she 
thought she had heard before, an angry mosquito, 
who now barked and yelped and everything. Ken¬ 
tucky ran down as fast as she could, to see what 
the noise was about. Beside the brook was a great 

furrin ” machine. Stuck tight to the mud. 

There was a great tall chauffeur-man, trying to 
jack up the car and get it out of the mud. There 
was a lady with curls and ribbons and red cheeks, 
bossing the chauffeur and saying sort of little roar-y 
things to him from out the back window of the car. 
There was another lady with straight hair and 
thick glasses who didn’t say anything. And, oh, 
there was a little girl with darling tansy-gold curls, 
just like Kentucky’s curls, and great blue eyes just 
like Kentucky’s eyes, and she was dressed in a scol¬ 
loped violet cape, and a scolloped velvet hat. 
Lindy, from behind a tree, stared and stared at 
her. 

It suddenly seemed to Lindy that her own dear 



148 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


new brown dress wasn’t quite so beautiful as it had 
been. She couldn’t think why. And she was won¬ 
dering and staring at the furriners ’’ and guess¬ 
ing how soon they would ride off into the world 
again, when the chauffeur went and opened the 
back door to the car and helped the two ladies and 
the little girl out into the road. Then he bent 
down again and started to jack up the car some 
more, and the lady with the thick glasses got some 
stones and brought them to him to put under the 
back wheels. 

Lindy, however, had no time to watch the homely 
lady with the thick glasses, or the pretty lady, 
either. She just simply had to spend every second 
watching the beautiful little girl. For that child 
had taken something out of the car with her, some¬ 
thing stranger, far more wonderful than herself, 
and all dressed in scollopy violet velvet, too—a 
walking doll! The little doll walked beside the 
little girl, and then bent over and said Ma! Ma! ” 
as though she was a poll-parrot with a pain. Such 
a doll! Just then the roar-y lady, who had been 
fussing around and scowling around and saying 
things to the chauffeur, turned and saw the little 
girl walking her splendid doll right through the 
mud. Oh, dear I She sort of pounced at the little 
girl. ''Lucy!"' she cried. "Look at your doll!" 
At that sudden pounce, Lucy let go of her doll, 
and it rolled and tumbled head-first, velvet and all, 
into the brook! 


PRINCESS AND THE WALKING DOLL 149 


Lindy, who had edged nearer and nearer, sud¬ 
denly snatched up a stick, ran down to where the 
doll was immersed, caught it up by its velvet skirts 
and iDulled it ashore. Then she held it out, drip¬ 
ping, to the beautiful little girl. 

You can imagine, can’t you, how surprised the 
little girl and the ladies and the chauffeur were to 
see Lindy. Of course Lindy had known all along 
that she was right there, but none of the rest of 
them had, and they couldn’t have acted any more 
surprised if one of the little trees had pulled itself 
up by the roots and run down to snatch the doll out 
of the water. They all sort of peered at her, as if 
she couldn’t be real. And when she held out the 
drippy doll on the end of the stick to them, none 
of them seemed to want to take it. The pretty lady 
began to scold the little girl, and the homely lady 
went to carrying rocks again, and the chauffeur 
bent double again, and there Lindy stood. Then 
the little girl began to cry, and Lindy, taking that 
wet doll off the stick and hugging it under her new 
brown arms, stepped right up to the pretty lady 
and said. 

Stop right thar! Don’t you dare say nothin’ 
agin’ her no more. You ain’t got any right to 
say it.” 

Well! that lady stopped. Her cheeks got redder. 
She looked ready to shake Lindy’s little livers out 
of her. But just then a call came down the moun¬ 
tain which Lindy knew very well. 


160 STOEIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


Hej, Lin—dee! ” rang the voice, supper’s 
ready.” 

My! The pretty lady looked at the watch on her 
wrist, the chauffeur looked at his watch, the lady 
with the thick glasses took her watch out of her 
belt as if it had been a spider which would bite 
her, and scowled at it. Then they all helplessly 
looked at each other. 

But the beautiful little girl edged up closer to 
Lindy and said, Hullo! ” and Lindy said. 

Howdy,” and the beautiful lady said, What 
shall we do?—I’m sure I don’t know!”—just as 
if she were two persons talking together. 

Lindy at once remembered her manners. Purty 
bad fix you’re in, ma’am. I’ll be mighty glad if 
you would come up and set awhile. Mam’s up at 
the house. She’ll be proud to see you.” 

So that is how Lindy came home to supper lead¬ 
ing a walking doll, dressed in violet velvet, and a 
little girl dressed in violet velvet, with two ladies 
and a chauffeur tagging behind. 

Pleased to see you, ma’am,” said Lindy’s 
mother, when they reached the cabin. Come in 
and set down.” 

They all went in, but the furriners ” didn’t seem 
to want any supper. I reckon them fine folks is 
trying to be uppety with us,” said Lindy’s pap, but 
all the same, as soon as supper was over he and his 
twelve sons went down the mountain with the 
chauffeur to help pull the car out of the mud. 


PRINCESS AND THE WALKING DOLL 151 


Lindj dried the doll’s clothes before the fire, and 
then the beautiful little girl was willing to take it 
again. 

The pretty lady talked to Lindy’s mother, and 
the lady with the thick glasses looked at Lindy, 
while Lindy stared at the little girl. Through 
those thick glasses and homely eyes this woman 
looked and looked at Lindy’s beautiful face, 
lighted by the fire, but she said nothing. And 
when the men came back to say that the car was 
pulled out of the mud, this quiet woman still said 
nothing, but she took little Lindy’s face between 
her hands and looked deep into her eyes for a 
moment. 

Then the furriners ” were gone, and after 
Lindy’s mother had smoked her pipe and knocked 
out the ashes it was time to lay down.” Lindy 
took off her beautiful brown dress just as if it had 
been a common every-day affair. And all night a 
doll in a velvet dress walked through her dreams. 
Nothing else seemed to matter at all. 

Do you suppose Lindy wondered even once, why 
she couldn’t have a walking doll and a velvet dress 
perhaps ? Why she had to stay high in the moun¬ 
tains where there was not a book, not a picture, not 
a thought except rough, every-day thoughts? 

But if Lindy did not wonder, the quiet governess 
of the homely eyes and the thick glasses wondered 
a great deal. 

They are only poor white trash,” said the 


152 STORIES FROM ’ROUND THE WORLD 


pretty lady easily, as they slipped out into the 
world again. 

I am going back to them,” said the homely lady 
with a queer smile, Lindy is the most beautiful 
child I ever saw. She is like a forgotten princess, 
asleep in an enchanted tower. Yes, I am going 
back. I am going to open a school. And I shall 
take Lindy the biggest walking doll I can find.” 


Printed in the United States of America 


AROUND THE WORLD 


PROF. EDWARD A. STEINER 

Author of “On the Trail of the Immigrant.** 

Old Trails and New Borders 

$1.50. 

A revelation of conditions to-day ^ in the countries of 
Europe from which the ranks of the immigrant have been 
largely recruited. 

“Alive in every line. The author is an exemplar of 
the possibilities America offers. Now he goes back to 
Europe to make a sympathetic survey. And whatever 
he sees he lets us see with him to the far horizon and 
with the larger background .”—Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

IT. F. JORDAN Secretary of The Upper Andes Agency of 

■' ■ - . . The American Bible Society 

Crusading in the West Indies 

With Introduction by Rev. W. T. Haven, D.D. 
Illustrated. 

The story of twelve years’ residence and experience in 
Latin America under the auspices of the American Bible 
Society. Mr. Jordan writes sympathetically of the men 
and women he has met, and of incidents which have 
come under his personal observation. Nearly every phase 
of life, as it is lived in Latin America, is dealt with. 


PAUL RADER 

'■ Pres. Christian and Missionary Alliance, 

’Round the Round World 

$1.50. 

What Mr. Rader saw and encountered in his round-the- 
world visit to foreign mission stations is here described. 
The breezy, inimitable personality of the writer is reflected 
from every page. It is a clarion call for world evangeliza¬ 
tion, written by one of the most virile and compelling 
forces in present-day American Christian activity. 


FRANKLIN H. MARTIN, C.M.G., M.D.^ and others 

South America from a Surgeon’s 
Point of View 

A Guide Book for Lay and Professional 
Travellers. Fully Illustrated. 

1. Description of trips to Panama, Peru,_ Chile, Argen¬ 
tina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia. 

2. Summary of Facts: Historical, Geographical, Polit¬ 
ical, Social and Industrial on all South American 

^°3!”v^abularies: English-Spanish and EngHsh-Portu- 

^4. illustratioBs: The Book is profusely Illustrated. 








WORK AMONG YOUNG FOLKS 


JEANNE M. SERRELL 

Former Chairman Presbyterian Woman's Board, 
Children's Department 

Tales of Great Missionaries 

For Young People. Frontispiece. $1.25. 

Records of deeds of courage and devotion done on the 
mission fields of the world. Instinct with the spirit of 
the Great Commission, they retell, in a delightful and 
refreshing way, the stories of the great missionaries— 
Carey, Judson, Paton, Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Mary 
Slessor, Coillard, and others. 

STUART NYE HUTCHISON, D.D. 

Bible Boys and Girls 

“Five-Minute Talks” $1.25. 

Dr. Hutchison’s “stories” are so well-known and their 
standard so high that it is unnecessary to say more than 
“here is another volume of Dr. Hutchison’s 'Talks ‘ on the 
interesting topic The Boys and Girls mentioned in the 
Bible.” 

E. A. HENRY^ D.D. introductory by Ralph Connor. 

Little Foxes 

“Five-Minute Talks” to Boys and Girls. $1.25. 

Here is a rich volume of talks to boys and girls. 
They were delivered by the author as Sunday morning 
talks, but _ they will be found equally suitable for all 
occasions in which ministers and superintendents desire 
to address the young folks. 

ROBERT C. FALCONER 

A Child’s Ramble Through the Bible 

The Old Testament. $1.25. 

Choosing with rare - discrimination such scenes in Holy 
Writ which, by reason of their rich imaginative quality, 
are best calculated to appeal to the juvenile mind, Mr. 
Falconer guides his young readers through a most delight¬ 
ful country. He has an indubitable eye for “color,” and 
a rare ability to utilize it to spiritual profit. 

AMY LEFEUVRE Author of "Probable Sons." 

The Most Wonderful Story 

A Life of Christ for Little Children. $1.50. 

The story of the life of Christ told by the famous author 
of children’s stories in a way that will appeal to the “little 
tots.” Although written in the author’s familiar story 
form, emphasis is given to the words of Christ and The 
Parables. 









SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK 


E. MORRIS FERGUSSON, D.D. 

Author of "How to Run a Little Sunday Schooi" 

Church School Administration 

A Manual for Pastor, Teacher, Superintendent 
and Director. $i. 75 * 

A comprehensive manual of Church school methods 
and administration, for pastor, teacher and superinten¬ 
dent written as the product of thirty-six years of active 
Church school work, Dr. Fergusson’s book presents the 
latest_viewpoints and standards of the continually chang¬ 
ing Church situation and forecasts further changes 
which appear to impend. 

CHARLES JV. BREirBAKER, D.D. 

A uthor of “ The Devotional Life of the Sunday School" 

A Program for Sunday School 

Management $i.oo 

A complete volume dealing with various phases of Sun¬ 
day school work, such as organization, programs, finance, 
music, community life, the school’s relation to the 
Church, and other details of administration. The book 
has been specially prepared to aid those, who, while more 
Hian willing to give generously of their service, have 
neither time nor opportunity to devote themselves to 
special preparation for efficient work. 

E. C. KNAPP General Secretary, Inland Empire 

— * ' ' ' Sunday School Association 

The Community Daily Vacation 
Bible School 

Introduction by F. Marion Lawrance. $i.oo. 

"Tells how to organize the school, how to finance it. how 
to advertise it, how to conduct it, and the daily program, 
music and worship, story telling %e verse finding, the sur¬ 
prise hour, hand work, health and habit talks, dramatics 
and pageantry, kindergarten and primary, games and out¬ 
ings, discipline and order, afternoon sessions, the final 
program. The book is concluded with a very good and 
up-to-date bibliography.”— N. W. Christian Advocate. 

W. E. ATKINSON (Compiler) 

The Value of the Sunday School 

Testimony of Successful Men. $i.oo 

It is a matter for genuine satisfaction to have 
brought together, the unanimous tribute of so many 
prominent men concerning the usefulness and high 
incentive of the Sunday-school in later life. The Vice 
President, Governors, Senators, Congressmen, ^ Mayors, 
merchants and other publicists all unite in bearing testi¬ 
mony to the good accomplished and the influence exerted 
by the Sunday School in every walk of life. 








THE FAR EASTERN QUESTION 


3 


MINGCHJEN JOSHUA BAU, M.A., Ph.D. 

Graduate Tsing Hua College, Yale, Columbia 
and Johns Hopkins Universities 

The Foreign Relations of China 

A History and a Survey. With index. 8vo, $4.00. 

new and thoroughly revised Edition including the 
findings of the Washington Conference regarding China. 

“A book of more than five hundred pages teeming with 
facts, bristling with dates, weighted with logic, from 
the first opening up of China up to the time of the present 
conference. The work is remarkable not only in the 
wealth of its contents, its scientific arrangement, its 
crystalline style, but in the temperate and restrained tone 
of its author.”— N. Y, Times Book Review* 

J, R. SAUNDERS, Th.D, 

Graves Theological Seminary, Canton, China, 

The Chinese as They Are 

Fully Illustrated. $1.50. 

‘‘Impresses on America the supreme opportunity and the 

f reatness of the task which confronts the Christian forces. 

t is not only a mine of useful information, but a challenge 
to missionary effort.”— Congregationalist. 

GE-ZAY ff^OOD 

Member of the Chinese Delegation to the 
Washington Conference. 

The Shantung Question 

$5.00. 

“A comprehensive history of the Shantung question from 
the German occupation of Kiaochow Bay down to the 
agreements reached a few months ago at Washington. The 
book will prove valuable for any one who desires a com¬ 
plete record of the question, and will be found particularly 
useful in that it presents in full the official documents illus¬ 
trative of the course of diplomacy with relation to Shan¬ 
tung.”— N. Y. Herald. 

OTHER BOOKS BY GE-ZAY WOOD 

China, the United States and the 
Anglo-Japanese Alliance 

$2.oa 

The Chino-Japanese Treaties of 
May 25th, 1915 

$2.00. 

The Twenty-one Demands 

Japan versus China. $ 2 . 00 , 








TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES 


NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

Author of “Great Books as Life-Teachers.** 

Great Men as Prophets of a New Era 

$1.50. 

Dr. Hillis' latest book strikes a popular chord. It 
fairly pulses with life and human sympathy. He has 
a large grasp of things and relations, a broad culture, 
a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there 
are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured 
in advance. The subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; 
William the Silent; Oliver Cromwell; John Wesley; John 
Milton; Garibaldi; John Kuskin. etc. 

THOS. R, MITCHELL, M.A., B.D. 

The Drama of Life 

A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare’s 
**Seven Ages/* Introduction by Nellie L. McClung. 

$1.25. 

A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. 
Mitchell handles his ^ subject with unusual directness, 
bringing to its discussion clarity of thought and lucidity 
of expression which has already won the enthusiastic 
endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. 
Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and 
Prof. Francis G. Peabody, 

D,MACDOUGALL KING, M.B. 

Author of “The Battle with Tuberculosis.** 

Nerves and Personal Power 

Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to 
Conduct and Health. With Introduction by Hon. 
W. L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 

Premier King says: “My brother has, I think helped 
to reinforce Christian teaching by showing wherein recent 
medical and scientific researches are revealing the founda¬ 
tions of Christian faith and belief in directions hitherto 
unexplored and unknown.—The world needs the assurance 
this book can.scarcely fail to bring.’* 


REV. R. E. SMITH Waco, Texas. 

Christianity and the Race Problem 

$ 1 . 25 * 

A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, 
written by a born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner 
and (Confederate soldier. Mr. Smith has lived all his 
life among negroes, and feels that he is capable of seeing 
both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. 







YOUNG FOLKS’ GAMES, STORIES, ETC 


MARY STEJVART Author of “Tell Me a True Story^ 

The Land of Punch and Judy 

A Book of Puppet Plays for Children. 
Illustrations by Mary B. Chisolm. $1.25. 

A distinct novelty is this book of children-plays, to be 
presented after the manner of the Punch-and-Judy show. 
Accompanying the text of the plays are a number of 
directions by the aid of which one may not merely act, 
but (for the time being, of course) he the characters met 
in these excursions into the I^and of Make-Believe. 

DILLON WALLACE 

The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador 

A Boy’s Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell. 
Illustrated. $1.50. 

Having himself braved the hardships and perils of the 
Labrador country, and knowing well how to reach his boy- 
audience, Dillon Wallace has produced a story of the 
great Labrador Missionary and Benefactor, which should 
quickly take a front place among Wallace’s popular stories, 

CHILDREN'S MISSIONARY SERIES 

Children of Jerusalem By C. B. How 
Children of Korea By Ellasue Wagner 
Illustrated in Colors. Each ^ 7 SC. 

Two new volumes in this delightful series of Chil¬ 
dren’s Travel Books intimately describing the young 
folks of modern Jerusalem and Korea. 

CORA BANKS PIERCE and HAZEL NORTHROP 

Stories from Foreign Lands 

$1.25. 

A new sheaf of stories by the authors of “Stories From 
Far Away.” Children of Turkey, Persia, Armenia, Africa 
and “the isles of the sea’’ are portrayed with skilful hand, 
and given a wealth of interesting and yet nowise im¬ 
probable adventure. 

KITTY PARSONS 

Do You Know Them? 

Brief Stories of Famous Lives. $1.25. 

A volume of brief biographies of some famous men and 
women, written expressly for boys and girls, who have 
outgrown mere toy and picture books. Among them are 
Roosevelt, Jenny Lind, Julia Ward Howe, John Paul 
Jones, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, etc., etc. 











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